Man Slaps 18-Year-Old Turning Point Volunteer at New Hampshire Polls. Police Chief: ‘It Wasn’t a Brush’

An 18-year-old working a Turning Point Action table outside a New Hampshire polling place got a middle finger in his face and a backhand across the mouth on Tuesday afternoon. He never raised a hand back.

It happened at Ward 5 in Laconia, the polling place at Woodland Heights Elementary School. The Laconia Daily Sun, the city’s paper, identified the young man as Rainer Vesey of Old Lyme, Connecticut, who was working the booth all day with his brother, Asher. The man who hit him has not been publicly named.

Police Chief Matt Canfield didn’t soften it. He told the Sun a discussion “became heated” and an “elderly male wound up assaulting a Turning Point member across the face.” Then he added the line that settles the argument before anyone starts it: “It wasn’t a brush.”

Watch it for yourself

Austin Dunn was there with a camera. He posted the video on 𝕏 a little after 4 p.m. with one line: “Calmest guy at the polling place today in NH was the 18-year old that got swung at. We want conversation, not violence!”

The older man does all the talking. “You have no idea who I am, so how dare you say I don’t know much,” he says, standing close to Vesey. Vesey answers once, evenly: “You haven’t presented a single statistic.”

“Neither have you!” the man shoots back, then swears. He backs off a few feet and comes right back. “You sit there and dare to look me in the face and say I don’t know anything?” He jabs a middle finger at Vesey. “That’s what I know.” Then he swings the back of his hand into Vesey’s mouth and walks off.

Vesey barely flinches. Bystanders say the man should be arrested, and someone off camera says to call the cops. That is the whole video: one side brought a folding table and some stickers, and the other side brought a hand.

What the police say

Canfield said officers got to the school just after 3 p.m. for a report of an assault. Because no officer saw it happen, they are talking to both men and to witnesses. He said the slap looked intentional.

Police have identified the man and plan to interview him. As of Tuesday evening, no charges had been filed. “We are investigating, and we will go from there,” Canfield said. He told the Sun he didn’t know whether Vesey would press charges.

People online have been passing around a name for the man. Police haven’t released one, so we aren’t printing it.

The question nobody else answered

Expect someone to say the Turning Point kids were too close to the polls. The chief already answered that. Canfield said the only other issue he knew of at Laconia’s polls all day was a question about how far Turning Point had to set up from a polling place, and “they didn’t do anything wrong.”

The law is just as plain. Under New Hampshire’s simple assault statute, RSA 631:2-a, it is a misdemeanor to purposely or knowingly cause “unprivileged physical contact” to another person. No injury is required. A slap in the face is exactly that.

The law has one way to shrink simple assault to a mere violation: a fight “entered into by mutual consent.” Nobody watching this video will see a fight. One man swung. The other stood there with his hands at his sides.

Who spoke up

Laconia’s mayor, Mike Bordes, a Republican who also serves in the state House, was campaigning at Ward 6 when it happened. He went over to Ward 5 to meet “the young gentleman from Connecticut,” who was there with his brother. “We can agree to disagree, but physical assault on someone is unacceptable anywhere,” Bordes told the Sun. On 𝕏 he put it in four words and a place: “Disgusting this happened at ward 5 in Laconia.”

Turning Point Action posted the same video before 4:30 p.m.: “He stayed calm. The left got violent.” Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, a New Hampshire native, was blunter.

Riley Gaines asked the obvious question: “Is a civil conversation really that hard for them?” Then she said what most people watching thought: “I hope this man is charged with assault.”

Why it matters

This is the group Charlie Kirk founded, and Kirk was shot dead last year while doing much the same thing Vesey was doing Tuesday: sitting under a tent on a college campus, inviting anyone who disagreed to come argue. Turning Point’s entire pitch is that you win with words. On Election Day in Laconia, a grown man was offered words and chose his hand.

An 18-year-old from Connecticut showed more self-control than a man three times his age. Now Laconia police have a video, a name and a chief on record saying it wasn’t a brush. The only thing left is a charge.