Teen escorted by police from N.H. Republican event
NASHUA, N.H. — Quinn Mitchell, the teenage politics whiz known for a testy exchange with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, was escorted out of a political event hosted by the state Republican Party Friday, where virtually every Republican thought to be considering a presidential run was scheduled to speak.
Mitchell, 15, was walked out of the Sheraton Nashua by multiple Nashua police officers just before 4 p.m.The hotel is the venue for the state party’s two-day First in the Nation Leadership Summit.
In a brief interview, Mitchell said he was told to leave while filming videos of Republican Perry Johnson, a longshot presidential candidate from Michigan who spoke to the crowd Friday afternoon.
”They told me I was being a disruption,” said Mitchell, who noted that five officers were involved in escorting him out of the hotel. “I was taking a video like anybody else.”
Mitchell said he was told by a GOP official at the event that he was known to disrupt events. A Globe reporter spotted him back at the summit less than an hour later.
Hailing from the tiny town of Walpole, N.H., Mitchell has built a local — and now national — reputation for his intense interest in politics and asking tough questions of presidential hopefuls as they campaign in the crucial early primary state. Mitchell isn’t old enough to drive or vote but has attended nearly 100 events and met at least 35 presidential candidates, from Elizabeth Warren to Donald Trump. He aspires to be a political journalist.
Mitchell’s experience with the DeSantis campaign over the summer brought a new level of attention to the high school freshman. An exchange he had with DeSantis at a June town hall circulated widely online. Mitchell asked the Florida governor: “Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?”
“Are you in high school?” DeSantis replied, before sidestepping the question with a rambling answer.
The exchange was followed by two incidents in which, Mitchell detailed to The Daily Beast, DeSantis security sought to intimidate him. In the first, at the July Fourth parade in Merrimack, Mitchell tried to engage with DeSantis, and he had his shirt tugged from behind before members of DeSantis’ security team surrounded him on the side of the parade route, Mitchell told the Globe at the time.
In the second incident, at an August town hall hosted by Never Back Down, a political action committee that supports DeSantis, an attendee told the outlet that they saw one staffer snap a picture of Mitchell on Snapchat, adding the caption “Got our kid.”