It was the hug the launched a thousand replays, ricocheting from one cable-news channel to another last Friday in the hours after University of Georgia senior Brett Smith rose at a town hall at Clemson University to tell presidential candidate John Kasich about his trying year.
Smith, it so happens, is also a volunteer for Kasich, serving as the University of Georgia’s campus coordinator for the governor’s super PAC, New Day for America.
“I tried to get a job as a paid staffer,” he tells me. “And they didn’t contact me back.”
The embrace Smith got from Kasich after telling the crowd about the suicide of a family friend, his parent’s divorce, and how his father has struggled after losing his job, was quickly dubbed the “hug that owns the Internet.”
For the past two weeks, Smith has been serving as the point man for Kasich on his campus, distributing campaign paraphernalia and doing his best to shore up support for the governor.
Nonetheless, Smith says the made-for-TV moment wasn’t choreographed. “Even when he called on me it was one of those things where, I pointed to myself and I was like, ‘Were you talking to me?’” he says. “So it was just the luck of the draw I guess.” A spokeswoman for New Day for America did not respond to a request for comment.
But Smith, who is something of a super-campaigner — when I spoke to him yesterday, he was heading home from two Kasich rallies — is now the star of a new television ad put out by the super PAC, which touts Kasich’s ”quiet strength” as it shows the two men bear-hugging on screen.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wYCNYifjjgs
Kasich told the Columbus Dispatch on Monday that he is not a “scripted candidate.” In this case, he and his strategists couldn’t have scripted the moment better.
UPDATE: Justin Green over at IJ Review wrote about this a few days ago, here, long before we did. Check out his reporter as well. A spokeswoman for Kasich’s super PAC, New Day for America, Connie Wehrkamp, says via email that one of the PAC’s staff members first spoke with Smith less than a week before last Friday’s town hall and confirms that he is now volunteering as a campus coordinator at the University of Georgia. “We’re really proud to have such a great young man giving up his time to help Governor Kasich,” she says.