Ron DeSantis brutally heckled during Iowa campaign event

With Iowa’s caucuses now less than a month away, Ron DeSantis’ dwindling 2024 campaign appears far from taking off in the state after the Florida governor was heckled during a speech at a town hall in Altoona on Sunday night.

The Republican governor, who launched his bid for 2024 in May but whose campaign has failed to pick up steam since then, was speaking of his administration’s successes at the Fireside Grill in Altoona when he was repeatedly interrupted by a woman asking about “a sex offender going to school.”

“We beat Fauci on COVID, we beat, we beat…,” DeSantis said before being interrupted by a woman asking, “then what happened? You have a sex offender going to school.”

It was not clear exactly what episode or what issue the woman was referring to. In Florida, convicted sex offenders are prohibited from living within 1,000 feet of a school, child care facility, park or playground.

DeSantis appeared unhappy about the interruption, asking the woman to “stop it” and telling her, “excuse me, I’m not finished, I’m doing my thing.”

The Florida governor tried to recover from the interruption by telling the woman “what happened,” saying that Florida “is number one rated state for education in the country.”

In a clip of the speech shared by journalist Andrew Craft on X, formerly known as Twitter, the woman can be heard continuing to speak over DeSantis’ through his attempt at minimizing the disruption.

Newsweek contacted DeSantis’ spokesperson for comment by email on Monday.

It’s not the first time that DeSantis found himself being heckled in Iowa. On August 11, when he was preparing to visit the Iowa State Fair, the Florida governor was heckled by women using cowbells and a bullhorn during his first speech in Menlo, as reported by The New York Times. The women were protesting DeSantis’ policies targeting the LGBTQ+ community, gender identity and education.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who’s now battling DeSantis for second in the GOP primary, spoke after the Florida governor at the Iowa town hall, delivering an unusual attack against her rival.

While Haley had so far refrained from criticizing DeSantis explicitly, in her speech on Sunday she accused him of lying about her and campaigning with “the most anti-Israel Republican into this state,” Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. DeSantis said that Massie is not against Israel, but against all foreign aid.

Both DeSantis and Haley are trailing Trump by double digits. As of December 17, DeSantis had 12.3 percent of the Republican vote, according to FiveThirtyEight, while Haley had 10.7 percent. As of the same day, Trump had 63.1 percent of the vote.

The latest poll by NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom found that Trump currently has 51 percent of support from Republican voters in Iowa, followed by DeSantis at 19 percent and Haley at 16 percent.