A Democratic state House candidate in Pennsylvania was reportedly assaulted in his own backyard, after a series of threatening incidents that lead him to suspect he is being politically targeted, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Monday.
The victim of the brutal attack was Democrat Richard Ringer, who said he was bloodied and knocked unconscious by an attacker in his own backyard around 5 a.m.,” the report said.
“‘A guy was standing with his back to me. I went and bear-hugged him, wrestled, ended up on the ground,’ said Mr. Ringer, 69, who is running in a contested race for the open 51st House District seat against Republican Charity Grimm Krupa. ‘He was larger than I am and he pinned me down on my left side. … He hit me 10 to 12 times in the head, in the face and by the eye and he knocked me out.'”
“Mr. Ringer has also had two incidents of vandalism to his home that have occurred within the last two weeks. One, a threatening apparently election-related message spray-painted on his garage door and the other a brick thrown through a storm door window. The spray-painted message was partially washed off by the rain by the time Mr. Ringer saw it, but what was left clearly visible were the words ‘your race’ and ‘dead,'” said the report.
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“Taken together, Mr. Ringer said he can’t help but be suspicious that the three incidents within three weeks of the general election are related to his candidacy, especially considering how ‘calm and quiet a neighborhood’ it is.”
Police said the attacker is still at large.
The incident comes as officials around the country sound the alarm about violent threats levied against elected officials and their families, one of the most high-profile being the home invasion and bludgeoning of Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at their house in San Francisco, last Friday.
