Most presidential campaigns know that the fresh-faced New Hampshire teen who shows up at events with civic-minded, largely nonpartisan questions is absolute gold. The candidate should answer the questions solicitously but without overt condescension, ask the kid’s name, and maybe pose for a photo of them talking seriously or shaking hands after the event. Make that one more thing the Ron DeSantis campaign team has whiffed in epic fashion, from beginning to end.
A Daily Beast report recounts how campaign staff and security intimidated and surveilled 15-year-old Quinn Mitchell, and Florida first lady Casey DeSantis suggested to Mitchell’s mother that he was lying about what happened.
If you’re following the Republican presidential primary, you’ve probably seen or read about the video in which Mitchell asked DeSantis, “Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?” DeSantis fumbled the answer. After flatly asking Mitchell if he was in high school, DeSantis dodged. “So, I wasn't anywhere near Washington that day,” he said. “I have nothing to do with what happened that day. Obviously I didn't enjoy seeing, you know, what happened, but we've got to go forward on this stuff. We cannot be looking backwards and be mired in the past.”
The Florida governor’s rivals pounced on his weak answer. As former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie responded, “He wasn't anywhere near Washington. Did he have a TV? Was he alive that day?”
Mitchell told the Daily Beast he “genuinely felt bad” about the attention garnered by DeSantis’ answer to his question, and wanted to apologize and maybe set up a chance for a do-over. Instead, when he arrived at the July 4 parade in Merrimack, staffers for DeSantis’ super PAC Never Back Down “were nudging the security guys and pointing at me,” Mitchell said. “I actually had a reporter come up and just say, ‘They’re pointing at you and they’re watching you.” As he tried to reach DeSantis—at an event, mind you, where candidates are supposed to work the crowds and seem approachable—security guards repeatedly blocked him. Then, after he finally succeeded in getting close enough to DeSantis to deliver his message, including saying, “I’m so sorry that I got you in all that trouble,” and getting a handshake, things escalated.
Security guards tugged him by the back of his shirt, he says, and a group of them surrounded him. Afterward, a DeSantis security staffer “cornered Mitchell and ordered him not to move from the spot for another five minutes,” The Daily Beast reports. Mitchell texted his mother, who went on to personally confront DeSantis in view of reporters. But those reporters didn’t witness what happened next: Casey DeSantis tried to step in and handle things.
“Well, I’m a mother, too,” Casey said, according to Mitchell and other witnesses, along with multiple sources who shared contemporaneous communications on the incident with The Daily Beast. “I know what you’re experiencing, and we’re all very afraid for our children—even if they’re exaggerating.”
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Does Casey DeSantis believe that she, as a mother, would respond well if someone accused her child of lying about being accosted by campaign staff?
Ron DeSantis reportedly promised Mitchell he would “get to the bottom” of what happened—but either he didn’t do that, or he decided his staff’s treatment of Mitchell was reasonable. The next time Mitchell showed up at a DeSantis event, Never Back Down staffers were photographing him, with one seen sending a Snapchat photo of the teenager with the message “Got our kid.” While security guards didn’t physically intimidate Mitchell in the way they had at the July 4 parade, they did make sure he didn’t get anywhere near the candidate.
All of this is “Really stupid,” as Mitchell told The Daily Beast, “in a small state like New Hampshire.”
Here’s a kid who has asked questions of virtually every presidential candidate during the past two cycles. One candidate blew the question badly enough to go viral and one campaign didn’t just try to keep the kid away from the candidate, but physically intimidated him—and it’s the same candidate and campaign.
At no point since has the DeSantis campaign tried to undo the mistakes it made and then doubled down on.
“The campaign, they could have called and said, ‘We’re so sorry, this should have never happened, we’ll get to the bottom of it,’” Mitchell said. “Never got a call like that. They never apologized to us for any of it.”
Ron DeSantis can’t answer a simple question, and his campaign thinks the teenager who asked it is at fault. Now they’ve handed every one of DeSantis’ competitors a way to take shots at him, implicitly or directly, by taking questions from Mitchell and making sure the video gets out. (Although it’s entirely possible he’ll ask them questions they don’t like, too.)
With blood already in the water as the candidate struggles, the DeSantis campaign has shown just how weak and thin-skinned it is—and that’s par for the course for DeSantis.
Trump’s continuing legal problems, the car crash of a Republican debate, and the polling numbers defy the traditional media’s narrative that the Republican Party is even above water with voters.