Throughout the weekend, the Ohio governor and his top aides, including campaign manager Beth Hansen, roamed the halls.
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Rand Paul’s presidential campaign, which had promoted the 2014 hiring of Yob as a major coup, declined to comment on the alleged punch-up.
“He literally physically assaulted me by punching me in the face”, Yob said in one post.
“I ran into a guy named Rich Beeson, who frankly I didn’t even know who it was at first”, Yob said. Yob claims he has video of the incident “from multiple angles”. This win in Michigan comes after the Paul campaign has seen a downward spiral in national poll numbers over the last few months, perhaps signaling a change in the race. Indeed, Paul won the 2013 straw poll with 36 percent of the vote.
Political blogger Brandon Hall told WXMI that he saw the altercation and called the punch “unprovoked”.
The MIRS/Detroit News straw poll of 785 attendees ranked Rand Paul first with 22%, Carly Fiorina second with 15%, John Kasich third with 14% and Ted Cruz fourth with 13%.
The slapper has been identified by the slapee as Marco Rubio campaign aide Rich Beeson.
However, a spokesperson for the Michigan state police confirmed to the Guardian that they are not involved in the investigation and that it is being handled by the Mackinac Island Police Department.
Darren McCollester/Getty Images Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, wasn’t expected at the biennial Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, which brought John Yob to town.
The two candidates participated in Wednesday’s Republican presidential primary debate.
Beeson, a veteran political operative and senior official on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, joined Rubio in March 2015.
Yob says that he has a video of the incident that he gave to CNN, which could not “independently confirm” that Beeson was the man in the video.
The police chief on the island said it was more like a shove, and he has forwarded the file to the prosecutor’s office to determine if charges are warranted.
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A flurry of accounts by Michigan reporters were posted Friday morning.
