Quinn is not a journalist, a political strategist or even a voter. He’s a 15-year-old high school freshman who, despite his age, has become a fixture on the New Hampshire presidential campaign circuit. His consistent presence and pointed questions at town halls and rallies led former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R) to describe him as “America’s most famous political teenager,” according to the Globe.
On Friday, Quinn was kicked out of the New Hampshire Republicans’ First in the Nation Leadership Summit after a volunteer accused him of being a Democratic operative, according to Quinn and state GOP officials. Claiming Quinn had caused multiple disturbances at previous events, a pair of GOP officials had security eject him from the Sheraton hotel in Nashua, N.H., he said.
On Sunday afternoon, Quinn, of Walpole, N.H., declined an interview request from The Washington Post, citing stress from a homework assignment. But he described the experience in a 13½-minute episode of his politics podcast “Into the Tussle.”
Quinn describes himself as a political enthusiast and history lover who has attended nearly 100 campaign events across New Hampshire, which has traditionally held the first presidential primaries in the country. Hoping to catch the latest from the Republicans trying to capture their party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election, Quinn said he emailed state GOP officials about attending the summit.
On Friday, he received an email notifying him that he could do so, and when he showed up, a GOP official gave him a volunteer pass, Quinn said. He got inside a few minutes before Christie was scheduled to speak. Later in the afternoon, he was filming long-shot candidate Perry Johnson, a businessman, when a woman approached him.
“I know who you are,” Quinn remembered her saying. “You’re a tracker.”
Quinn said he was confused, unsure of what a tracker was. Later, he learned that the woman — an event volunteer — had accused him of being a Democratic operative tasked with recording Republicans’ campaign appearances. He said he was taken to a back room, where another GOP official accused him of misrepresenting himself and causing disturbances at previous events.
Quinn said he left without causing a fuss, accompanied by an “entourage of security people.”
In an email, New Hampshire GOP spokesman Jimmy Thompson told The Post that “an overzealous volunteer mistakenly made the decision to have Quinn removed from the event, thinking he was a Democrat tracker. Once the incident came to our staff’s attention NHGOP let him back into the event where he was free to enjoy the rest of the summit.”
In his podcast, Quinn said that security continued to investigate, eventually realized there had been a mistake, restored his credentials and let him back into the summit. The New York Times reported that he did so and watched DeSantis speak but left when the governor started taking questions.
Quinn’s interest in politics started in 2018 when he was 10 and happened to meet then-state Sen. Jay Kahn, according to the Globe. The two chatted about history, national politics and the New Hampshire government, the Globe reported. The Democratic lawmaker urged him to fuel his passion by attending statewide political events, advice Quinn took him up on, at first going to small gatherings tied to the gubernatorial race before graduating to the vaunted New Hampshire presidential primaries, the Globe reported.
During the campaign leading up to the 2020 presidential primary, Quinn met Klobuchar and asked about Mueller testifying before Congress, the Globe reported. She was impressed by his tough questions and encouraged him to keep asking them.
Since then, he has attended some 95 political events and met at least 35 presidential candidates, including Biden, Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). He told NBC News that he’s interested in becoming a journalist and has taken advantage of the opportunity to witness and engage in presidential campaigns.
“I’ve always been so interested in politics, because I’ve always loved history,” Quinn told NBC News. “When I learned this history was being made in my backyard, I knew I wanted to play a part in it and ask these questions.”
Quinn again attracted the national spotlight on June 27 when at a DeSantis campaign event in Hollis, N.H., he asked the governor whether he believed Trump had violated the peaceful transfer of power in 2021.
DeSantis, in response, asked if Quinn was in high school. Then, he dodged the question, saying that he and other Republicans will lose elections if they re-litigate events that happened years ago.
During a Fourth of July parade the following week, Quinn again approached DeSantis, the Daily Beast reported. He said he wanted to apologize about their exchange making national news, but before he could fully address the issue with DeSantis, he was surrounded and physically restrained by security, according to the Daily Beast. He was “grabbed and physically intimidated” at two later campaign stops, which he described to the Daily Beast as “horrifying.”
On his podcast, Quinn said that series of events led him to believe the DeSantis campaign was involved with his ejection on Friday.
Bryan Griffin, a DeSantis campaign spokesman, told The Post in an email that the campaign was not involved in Quinn being ejected from the summit on Friday and didn’t even know he was at the event.
Regardless, Quinn isn’t showing any signs of letting up on questions that make powerful politicians squirm. His questions are meant to reveal the candidates and their campaigns to his fellow Granite State residents.
“It really shows you,” he said on his podcast, “how some campaigns may react when you ask a question that gets a candidate in trouble and embarrasses a candidate.”
