LACONIA, New Hampshire — A 70-year-old poet has been arrested in Laconia after a viral video showed him allegedly backhanding an 18-year-old Turning Point Action volunteer across the face outside the Woodland Heights Elementary School polling site on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 2026, the Laconia Police Department said. Police identified the man as Stephen Redic, and said officers arrested him at about 8 a.m. on Wednesday, November 4, on charges of simple assault, a misdemeanour, and disorderly conduct, a violation. The charges are allegations; Redic has not been convicted of anything in this case.
According to the police account given in a press release and reported by the New York Post and Fox News Digital, Redic approached the Turning Point tent as he was leaving the polling site and wanted “to read a poem about rich people.” The poem itself is not in the viral video. The footage instead shows the young volunteer attempting to debate while Redic raises his voice and grows increasingly angry, at one point saying, “You sit there and dare to look me in the face and say I don't know anything?” and then, “That's what I know,” before backhanding him. The video shows Redic giving the volunteer the middle finger, slapping him across the face and walking away, swearing as he left, while people off camera discussed calling the police and onlookers reacted audibly in surprise.
How police built the case
Laconia police reviewed the video footage and witness statements from the polling site, obtained an arrest warrant, and took Redic into custody on the morning of Wednesday, November 4. Laconia Police Chief Matthew Canfield told Fox News Digital on Wednesday: “We're not familiar with him, meaning we've had no prior contacts.” The department's account, carried in its press release, is that the confrontation began when Redic approached the campaign tent on his way out and asked to read his poem — a detail that matters legally, because it places the encounter at a public polling place on Election Day, where campaign volunteers and voters are both entitled to be.
Who Stephen Redic is, on the record so far
Redic is a published poet. He brought out a book of poems in 2023, “Tying My Shoes,” in which, the Post reported, he boasted of having met every U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Beyond that, little verified biographical detail has been published: it was not immediately clear on Wednesday afternoon whether he had retained a lawyer, and he did not immediately respond to an attempt to reach him, the Post reported. Readers should treat the video as one piece of evidence in a case that will now be tested in court, not as the whole record.
The reaction in Belknap County
The arrest drew a response well beyond one school car park. Local officials and both Belknap County party committees — Democratic and Republican — publicly condemned the attack, according to summaries of the local reaction, while Turning Point Action and conservative figures circulated the video widely online, which is how a Laconia misdemeanour case became a national story within a day. New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, the state's chief election official, had spoken with the Turning Point Action member minutes before the incident and later went to the site, according to Fox News reporting on the case.
American elections run on volunteers: party workers staff tents outside polling places, hand out literature and talk to voters, and they do it in public, a short distance from the ballot boxes, under rules meant to keep the voting itself calm. An alleged assault on an 18-year-old volunteer — captured on video and seen nationally — is therefore not just a street scuffle. It is a test of whether the space around a polling site stays safe for the youngest and least powerful people in the process, which is why both county parties condemned it.
The wider context the reports themselves raise
Coverage of the Laconia arrest has repeatedly noted the timing: the slap comes 14 months after Charlie Kirk, the founder of both Turning Point USA and its affiliate Turning Point Action, was assassinated at Utah Valley University under a similar tent. His accused killer, Tyler Robinson, is due in court on Monday for a hearing that could see a trial date set, and has pleaded not guilty. The Post drew that line explicitly, and it explains why a single slap in New Hampshire drew national cameras: Turning Point's tents have become a symbol in the country's political argument, and incidents at them are now read against the Kirk killing.
What happens next
Redic is due in court on December 10 for an arraignment in Laconia, where he will be formally told of the two charges — simple assault, a misdemeanour, and disorderly conduct, a violation under New Hampshire law — and will have the chance to enter a plea and be represented by a lawyer. The police evidence, on their account, is the video and the witness statements; the defence has not yet been heard in public. Awaaz Punjab will follow the December 10 hearing and any further statements from Laconia police or the Belknap County courts.