Teddy Daniels, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania, was ordered to temporarily leave his home and stay away from his wife and child after his wife acquired a court order against him this week.
State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), a leading candidate in the GOP primary for governor, has endorsed Daniels. Governors and lieutenant governors don’t run on the same ticket in Pennsylvania, but the two are so linked as to sometimes be referred to as “running mates” in local reports.
A Wayne County judge granted Daniels’ wife Jaime a temporary protective order, barring her husband from their home in Lake Ariel, ordering him to relinquish his weapons and giving her temporary custody of their child, according to documents obtained by TPM. The order was first reported by Rolling Stone, which has published previous domestic abuse allegations against Teddy Daniels.
Teddy Daniels has not yet formally responded in court to his wife’s allegations. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 6.
“These unfounded allegations are the result of politically motivated attacks on me and my family,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In her handwritten notes accompanying the order, Jaime Daniels described her husband’s alleged abuse.
“He stalks me at work, screaming at me, making me cry. He cursed at me continually and our son repeats it to me,” she wrote. “He has constantly said he would throw myself and our son out of the house and, if he lost the campaign, I wouldn’t have a place to live in three weeks.”
She said that she faced pressure from Teddy Daniels’ campaign to keep silent.
“Ted’s campaign manager has called me 12 times to persuade me not to file this PFA,” she wrote of the protection from abuse order.
She alleged prior incidents of violence in the filing, including Teddy Daniels grabbing the front of her shirt to pull her to his face and saying “don’t you ever speak to me like that” and threatening to kill the family dog in front of children. She also alleged that he prevents her from visiting her family, and that he told her she couldn’t attend a family funeral.
In her notes, she described a Sunday police visit that left Teddy Daniels “very agitated,” culminating in her Monday drive to the courthouse to get the protective order as he followed behind.
“He asked if I was going to file a PFA and I started crying,” she wrote. “I started to go to the courthouse and he tried not to let me go.”
She said that she spotted a state trooper and told him where she was headed, and that he said it was a “good idea.”
She added that Teddy Daniels has numerous guns, knives and ammunition in the house, and “has loaded weapons where our son could access them.”
“I am afraid of him and what he will do to me and our son,” she said, alleging that Teddy Daniels has threatened to kill himself.
Teddy Daniels’ spokesperson declined to provide comment but directed TPM to his lawyer.
Teddy Daniels tweeted: “Anyone can walk into any courtroom to get a temporary PFA” and posted a video to Facebook Wednesday, saying he’d been “swatted” three times, the practice of making prank calls to law enforcement to swarm a home with officers.
He monologued to a seeming phone camera in his hand, pacing around the parking lot of a strip mall.
“This is political terrorism,” he said in the video, adding: “Folks, I ain’t dropping out of nothing, and I ain’t quitting.”
He said that he suspects potential involvement from one of his “primary opponents” and placed extensive blame on “liberal” media outlets, occasionally saying that the two entities were colluding to take down the “frontrunner.” He compared his treatment to that of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, and President Donald Trump.
“It has really put my entire family on edge,” he said.
He said that his wife had asked him “several times” to drop out of the race.
“And I told her, I said, ‘I love you, but I ain’t dropping. I ain’t dropping. This is what they want, and I’m not going to let ‘em win,’” he added.
Mastriano has not pulled his endorsement of Teddy Daniels, or publicly addressed the allegations.
