VIDEO: Sheriff running for mayor of Albuquerque has campaign event interrupted by flying drone with sex toy attached, then gets punched

Big news coming out of New Mexico. A sheriff who is running for mayor of Albuquerque was holding a political event that was torpedoed by an unusual distraction — a sex toy attached to a flying drone. If that wasn't hard enough on the sheriff, he was punched.

Manuel Gonzales III, a Democrat, was speaking to 70 people, including children, at Revel Entertainment Center in Northeast Albuquerque on Tuesday. Out of the blue, a drone with a sex toy strapped to it buzzed around the New Mexico sheriff.

Gonzales was flustered by the sex toy attack.

"It became so distracting from the sound and everything I couldn't really get my point across," he said.

According to Yahoo News, a woman in the audience asked, "Is that a dong on a drone?"

"We have a gentleman over here who I guess is trying to be cute," Gonzales reportedly said.

While the flying apparatus was in the air, the venue's owner beat off the drone. That's when the reported owner of the drone, later identified as 20-year-old Kaelan Ashby Dreyer, attempted to recover the flying sex toy by yanking it away from the venue owner.

After failing to come and get his drone, Dreyer then reportedly attempted to drill the Bernalillo County sheriff while calling him a "tyrant."

During an ensuing scuffle, deputies say, Dreyer was "swinging his balled up fist at Manuel Gonzales III" and yelling "he's a tyrant" and the sheriff was struck in the arm.

"He tried to take a swing at me and he glanced across my arm," Gonzales told the Albuquerque Journal. "He struck me and I just took a step back. It wasn't anything I was very concerned about. I've been in a lot worse situations."

Following the sex toy attack, the headstrong Gonzales campaign said he "will not be intimidated."

Dreyer was reportedly booked into jail on charges of petty misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor resisting, evading or obstructing an officer. Dreyer has since been released on his own recognizance.

"He stated that he never intended to hit Manuel but was upset that Manuel was answering a question, from the crowd, in a disrespectful way," a deputy wrote about Dreyer in the complaint. "He stated that he did ball his fist and was just going to swing them through the air and leave the premises."

Gonzales said he saw a man on the other side of a fence who he believes was operating the adult toy drone.

"There was nobody there (in the audience) that you could digitally see operating the drone," Gonzales said. "But I saw him glancing over with a smirk on his face. And when I made eye contact with him, he kind of looked down. So that to me would indicate that he was the operator of the drone."

The sheriff believes that Dreyer and the other man are "trained political operatives," who are in bed with the rival campaign of fellow Democrat and incumbent Mayor Tim Keller. Gonzales claimed the dildo drone attack was "very intentional" and was a "coordinated effort" to screw with his rally.

"I was trying to answer one of the lady's questions that was with this group of four that were political operatives for somebody, I believe possibly the other campaign," Gonzales theorized. "So for me, I was surprised. And it was distracting.

"Those people were planted there," Gonzales said. "They went there. They didn't go over there to have a civil discourse, they were there to disrupt. And they did act out that violence. So to me, it's very intentional."

Keller's campaign condemned the stunt.

"By now people have seen the video where Manny was interrupted by a drone with an adult toy attached to it. No question it was disruptive, rude and immature," Keller campaign manager Neri Holguin stated. "We denounce demeaning antics and urge residents to participate in the political process in a respectful manner."

Keller's campaign pushed back against the theory they were behind the dildo drone by saying that there is no stiff competition between the two candidates.

"To suggest we were behind it is pathetic and the kind of desperation that has marked Manny's troubled campaign," Holguin said.

Dreyer has also denied being a political pawn for the incumbent mayor.

"Manny Gonzales is trying to associate me with Tim Keller or radical leftist behavior," Dreyer told the Albuquerque Journal. "I'm not a fan of Tim Keller either and identify as libertarian."

Strangely enough, this isn't the first time a political news conference was interrupted by a drone strapped with a sex toy. In 2008, Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov was speaking at a political news conference when he was rudely interrupted by a remote-controlled drone with a phallic-shaped sex toy attached.