HARISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) – Six days before the Pennsylvania primary, Republicans are openly worried that a leading Republican candidate for governor is ineligible for the fall general election and will seek the party’s takeover executive on the battlefield.
Doug Mastriano, 58, a 2019 U.S. senator and retired U.S. Army colonel, is fighting right on the Republican field with nine people and against establishing the party in a state still rocked by former President Donald Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories. that Democrats stole the election there in 2020
Mastriano is a notorious trader of baseless allegations that widespread fraud has marred the 2020 election and that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolfe is responsible for thousands of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. During the pandemic, he downplayed efforts to curb the virus and spread conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccine.
This has long made Republican officials and conservatives in the movement uncomfortable with Mastriano’s prospects in the fall election against Democrat Josh Shapiro in the general election, and they are becoming more vocal.
On Monday, Republican Senate leader Kim Ward backed running candidate Dave White, calling Mastriano incapable of attracting the moderate voters needed to win the Pennsylvania general election.
Mastriano “attracts major Republicans, but I’m afraid Democrats will destroy him with unlimited voters,” Ward wrote on his Facebook page. She added that “winning the primary and losing the general because the candidate is unable to attract voters in the middle is not a victory.”
Mike McMonagall, president of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Coalition, said Mastriano received the highest rating from his organization because he supported a total ban on abortion, without exception. But the organization approves of White, at least in part, because Mastriano “in our opinion would be hit by Shapiro in a general election.”
Republicans have been expelled from the 2014 Pennsylvania governor’s office under Democratic Gov. Tom Wolfe, who was barred from running for office again.
Losing the race again this year would mean that Republicans are wasting their turn: the party returns to every election when a Democrat with a limited term leaves after the state constitution was changed in 1968 to allow governors to serve two mandate.
But Republicans are worried that Mastriano is too toxic to win moderate Republicans and swap voters in the densely populated suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, while threatening non-voting Republican candidates with low turnout.
Mastriano came out of nowhere in 2020 to become a rising force in right-wing politics.
He led anti-exclusion rallies at the start of the pandemic, broadcasting live daily chats on Facebook and playing conspiracy theorists. He has become a key figure in Trump’s efforts to undo the loss of the 2020 presidential election, prompting Mastriano to receive a summons from a congressional committee investigating the January 6 uprising in the US Capitol.
Democrats began to pay more attention to Mastriano, portraying him as an extremist in an attempt to weaken him before the general election.
In recent days, Democrats have released digital advertisements and flyers attacking Mastriano, while Shapiro broadcasts a television commercial across the country, portraying Mastriano as the ultimate for his support for banning abortions, the promise to cancel the postal vote and conspiracy-led attempts to investigate 2020. elections.
Their bottom line is, if Mastriano wins, “it’s a victory for what Donald Trump stands for.”
“Doug Mastriano will pull our community back with a final program; he is not close to the governor’s office, “said a statement from Shapiro’s campaign.
In a telephone interview with Lancaster-based LNP, Mastriano said Shapiro’s attack would “absolutely” help him win the primary.
“I will have to send him a thank you card,” Mastriano told LNP. He added that Shapiro had underestimated him and that the republican establishment was “panicking” at the prospect of him being nominated by the party.
Neither Trump nor the Republican Republican Party supported the primary race, leaving it much more open. And Mastriano – once considered a candidate from the top positions – exceeded expectations in an area where some candidates started with much more money or recognition of names.
A recent poll by Franklin and Marshall College found that 20 percent of Republican primary voters say they support Doug Mastriano. Bill Maxwayne and Lou Barletta are slightly behind, by 12% and 11%, respectively.
However, a large group of voters, or a third, said they had not decided, and even among those who said they supported the candidate, about half said they could change their minds.
Mastriano first won followers by leading anti-exclusion rallies in the first months of the pandemic, then became one of Trump’s most loyal supporters during the 2020 campaign.
He worked with Trump to undo the result and organized bus trips to the US Capitol for the January 6 Stop Theft rally, where he was later seen in footage of his wife passing through breached barricades set up by police. Capitol.
He said on a radio show last May that Trump had “asked” me to run for governor.
In the weeks that followed, he tried to launch an Arizona-style guerrilla “audit” in the 2020 election – only to be stripped of the chairmanship of the Senate Republican Party leadership in a clash over funding and hiring contractors.
Mastriano boasted that he was more conservative than his rivals, that he attracted larger crowds and was not a politician, a class that was ridiculed as corrupt.
He often campaigns with key figures in Trump’s circle, spreading denial about the 2020 election, including former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and lawyer Jenna Ellis. And he campaigns with strong Christian themes, praying in his campaign events, supplementing his speech with quotes from the Bible, and calling for fasting in the last 21 days of the primary election.
“So let’s be strong together, get our state back, and when Pennsylvania is rebuilt, I believe there will be a renaissance here like we’ve never seen before,” Mastriano told an audience Monday in Somerset on a week-long bus tour. “And that will bring our nation back to where it should be, to God.”
The general election cycle will bring new challenges for Mastriano.
He largely avoids speaking to independent media, including the Associated Press, and barred reporters from participating in his campaigns. Last week, he entered the Delaware Valley Journal’s conservative podcast before receiving what the organization called a “crash” and closing in 20 minutes.
What provoked Mastriano was the questions he recently spoke to an audience of QAnon supporters, his allegations of election fraud and his activities at the Capitol on January 6.
The summons from the commission appeared on January 6th during the only primary live debate on television attended by Mastriano. He insisted there were no “legal issues”.
Meanwhile, Shapiro united the Democratic Party and its allies.
Dave Ball, chairman of the Washington County Republican Party, said many Republicans are concerned that Mastriano’s appeal is narrow.
But, he said, Republicans will need Mastriano and his constituents and vice versa to defeat Shapiro, regardless of who wins the primary.
“It’s better for the whole Republican Party to stand behind the winner,” Ball said, “because Josh Shapiro is still there.”
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