Diezel Depew, the 22-year-old mayor of Edgewater, Florida, faces a battery report filed by a female veteran who says he struck her with a campaign sign outside an early voting site, an accusation he flatly denies as a political attack.
Donna McDavid, a veteran living with ALS who supports rival candidate Wayne McCloskey, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that Depew pushed a campaign sign into her face and chest outside a New Smyrna Beach public library being used as a polling location. The confrontation happened late on a Friday, shortly before early voting for the Edgewater mayoral primary was set to begin.
Depew called police himself, not over the alleged contact, but because someone had moved one of his signs. McDavid then filed a battery report with the New Smyrna Beach Police Department. The responding officer could not confirm whether McDavid was actually struck, and no charges have been filed. Depew has not been arrested.
The incident adds another chapter to an already turbulent political career for a young mayor who won office at 18 and has courted controversy ever since.
McDavid told reporters that Depew placed a campaign sign directly against her body. She said he knew exactly what he was doing.
As the New York Post reported, McDavid was at the library with an unnamed man, and neither was pleased to see Depew at the site. She described the moment bluntly:
"He chose to put it against me. He knows me personally.... He was pushing that sign into me."
Depew offered a sharply different account. He told Fox35 that the contact never happened and that McDavid was the one who closed the distance between them:
"This did not occur. She moved toward me. I've never been accused of being aggressive in my life. This is just a baseless character attack."
He went further in comments to WESH, calling the complaint "a totally unfounded political attack."
So the two sides offer irreconcilable versions of the same few seconds outside a public library. The responding officer's report did not resolve the dispute. McDavid says she was battered. Depew says she wasn't touched. No witness account from the unnamed man who accompanied McDavid has surfaced publicly.
Depew became the youngest elected official in Florida history when voters in Edgewater, a city of roughly 24,000 on the state's east coast, chose the then-18-year-old as their mayor in November 2022. The distinction made him a local curiosity and, almost immediately, a magnet for controversy.
During that same 2022 race, his opponent, former mayor Mike Ignasiak, was charged with petit theft for allegedly stealing Depew's campaign signs. The charge was dropped in February 2023 after Ignasiak entered a prosecution agreement that required him to pay $20 to Crime Stoppers of Northeast Florida, $50 to the state attorney's office, and $50 to the Edgewater police. He was also given the choice of completing 25 hours of community service or donating $250 to charity. WKMG reported on the case's dismissal.
Campaign signs, it seems, have been a recurring flashpoint in Edgewater politics.
The battery complaint is not Depew's first brush with public scrutiny beyond the ballot box. In September 2024, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that Depew, then 20, was accused of underage drinking and using a racial slur while rapping along to a song. A video surfaced in which he said, "I need alcohol."
The details of whether any authority verified the video's authenticity, or whether any formal action resulted, are not clear from available reporting. But the episode added to a pattern: a very young officeholder generating headlines that have little to do with governing a small Florida city and everything to do with questions about judgment and temperament.
Depew is now running for re-election against McCloskey. His campaign platform includes proposals to reduce utility costs for Edgewater residents, though specifics of those proposals have not been detailed in reporting on the sign incident.
As things stand, the battery report sits with the New Smyrna Beach Police Department. No prosecutor has acted on it. The responding officer's inability to confirm contact between the sign and McDavid leaves the allegation in a gray zone, serious enough to generate a police report, but unsupported by independent corroboration so far.
McDavid is a veteran with a degenerative disease. Depew is an incumbent mayor seeking another term. The confrontation, whatever its precise mechanics, happened in the most public of settings, outside a polling place, moments before voting began. Both parties had reason to be there, and both have reason to frame the encounter to their advantage.
Depew's defenders will point out that no charges have been filed and that the officer on scene could not confirm the claim. His critics will note that a 22-year-old mayor with an underage-drinking controversy and a racial-slur accusation already on his record can't afford another incident that raises questions about how he handles himself in public.
Voters in Edgewater will sort it out at the ballot box. But when a mayor's most consistent headlines involve campaign signs, police reports, and personal conduct rather than potholes and utility bills, the residents paying those bills deserve to ask whether they're getting the leadership they voted for.
