A rally for Senator Elizabeth Warren turned ugly on Sunday when one a Warren supporter assaulted one of the senator’s challengers in the midterm elections.
Paul Solovay, 74, has been charged with assault after he pushed Shiva Ayyadurai’s bullhorn into his mouth at the rally in Great Barrington, Mass., giving Ayyadurai a bloody lip.
The two had a heated exchange beforehand during which Ayyadurai called Solovay a racist.
Some of the Indian-born candidate’s supporters tackled Solovay to the ground after he attacked Ayyadurai, and he was promptly arrested.
“That’s racism right there,” the Indian independent candidate told bystanders afterwards. “You don’t know what racism is; you’ve never experienced it.”
“What you just witnessed is how you white supremacists react when you don’t want to hear the truth from a dark-skinned Indian guy, the same guy you claim you want to help,” he shouted over the megaphone to the crowd across the street.
Ayyadurai has called the two main U.S. political parties “heads of the same snake” and said he is “not a righty or a lefty.” Some at the rally criticized him for his personal attacks and for interrupting Warren as she spoke to supporters outside.
The candidate called Warren a “scumbag lawyer lobbyist” and the crowd “liberal fascists” and “white supremacists.”
“We’re going after him hard,” he said of Solovay, who pled not guilty to assault and battery and disorderly conduct. “We’re going to make an example of him.”