Throughout his trip to New Hampshire, he appeared bent on demonstrating that no candidate talks tougher. He promised that, under his presidency, Mexican drug cartels would be “shot stone cold dead,” and vowed that when it comes to federal bureaucrats, “we are going to start slitting throats on Day One.”

The crowd that listened to DeSantis at the Rye event, a barbeque, hosted by former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, was heavily Republican. And, by and large, DeSantis’ message went down fine. But not everyone liked the word choice, particularly the bit about slitting throats.

“If I was in charge of his PR, I would have said, ‘Don’t use that terminology,’ ” said Norm Olsen, a GOP primary voter from Portsmouth who describes himself as a “Sununu Republican.”