Emma González. Photo: Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty Images

Politicians are right to feel threatened by the survivors of last month’s horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as the brave students aren’t afraid of lambasting elected officials for both their inaction and failures. It appears that vocal survivor Emma González managed to get under one Republican Maine House candidate’s skin, though, provoking him to call her a “skinhead lesbian.”

Leslie Gibson, the GOP candidate who’s a lifetime member of the NRA and is running unopposed in Maine’s 57th District, apparently saw no problem at the time with publicly expressing these sentiments in a now-deleted Tweet. In response to an article that featured a photo of González (who is bisexual), Gibson wrote, “There is nothing about this skinhead lesbian that impresses me and there is nothing that she has to say unless you’re a frothing at the mouth moonbat.” He later suggested that she doesn’t count as a survivor because she was in a “different part of the school” than the 17 victims, the Daily Dot reports.

You said it was @gibson_house that said that?



Like, LESLIE GIBSON, the Tresurer of @AndroGOP? The guy running for District 57 State House seat? He called @Emma4Change what???



A "skin head lesbian"? #ParklandShooting#mepolitics pic.twitter.com/0q0YEZMCvL — Darth Mueller (@TrumanChapman27) March 12, 2018

Gibson also called survivor David Hogg a “bald-faced liar” in another tweet that is now, unsurprisingly, deleted. After recognizing the inappropriateness of these tweets, Gibson apologized on Twitter.

“I would like to extend to you my most sincere apology for how I addressed you,” he said. “It was wrong and unacceptable. You are doing work that is important to you. I would like to extend my hand in friendship and understanding to you.”

However, Gibson justified his behavior by claiming that he was simply standing up for constitutional rights.

“It was not appropriate to single out the Parkland students, but I stand firm in my defense of our constitutional rights,” he told the Portland Press Herald. He also said that after he’s elected, he plans to “lead the charge in the protection and preservation of our constitutional rights and our Maine traditions against these attacks.”

While Gibson’s comments have angered people both in his District and around the country, no one has yet entered the race to challenge him.

“I wish I knew someone who could get into this race,” Pat Fogg, a Democratic organizer, told the Portland Press Herald. “That sort of stupidity really turns people off.”