A tussle between a staffer at Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s Huntington Beach office and activists on Tuesday resulted in a 2-year-old girl being knocked in the head by a door and the congressman’s 71-year-old district director being transported to a local hospital after falling to the ground.
Neither the child nor the aide was seriously injured.
Just before the early-afternoon incident, about 100 constituents gathered on the street and sent a group of about a dozen to Republican Rohrabacher’s third floor office to deliver Valentine’s Day cards asking the congressman to hold a town hall meeting. The strategy also was used at least two other Orange County Congress members’ local offices Monday and Tuesday.
Finding the office doors locked, the activists shoved the cards under the door. The 2-year-old daughter of Megan Blash of Huntington Beach was adding a card when the door opened suddenly and the girl, who was bending over, was hit on the head. She began crying but was comforted by her mother and did not appear injured.
“She was just startled, mostly,” Blash said several hours later.
At least one of the activists then began tugging at the door while the woman on the other side, district director Kathleen Staunton, tried to close it. A male activist then grabbed the door and forcefully pulled it open. That caused Staunton, who was pulling from the other side, to fall.
She was then helped to her feet and returned inside the office, while the door was closed and locked.
Rohrabacher spokesman Ken Grubbs said Staunton later fell unconscious and was transported to a local hospital by paramedics.
“I don’t think anybody from either side was trying to hurt anybody,” Blash said.
But Rohrabacher harshly condemned the activists.
“Deliberate or not, the incident came as part of a mob action that not only intimidates but coerces,” he said in a statement. “Though protesters think of themselves as idealists, they engaged in political thuggery, pure and simple.”
A large majority of those on hand were women, many of them senior citizens. They had planned to send people to Rohrabacher’s office in groups of ten to avoid congesting the building’s hallways, although police asked all activists to leave after the tussle.
A reporter accompanying the group up to the office heard one activist tell others in the group to be quiet.
“Try to keep it down in the hallways – there are other businesses here,” she said.
After the incident, Aliso Viejo jeweler Patti Jo Kiraly, 56, said, “We’re all sorry that happened. That was very sad. We should all write apology letters.”
Activists belonging to a group called Indivisible have been calling on Republican Congress members nationwide to hold town hall meetings so they can express concerns with policies and appointments of President Donald Trump. It was the fourth visit the group has made to Rohrabacher’s office.
None of Orange County’s four Republican Congress members has publicly scheduled any town hall meetings since Trump took office.
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