CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — Doug Mastriano, a far-right state senator and leading voice in Pennsylvania’s election denial movement who drew national attention for his efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat, has won the Republican nomination for governor, according to the Associated Press.
Mastriano, 58, prevailed in Tuesday’s nine-candidate primary election despite a frantic 11th-hour push by some Pennsylvania GOP insiders to rally behind an alternative and avert what they fear will be certain defeat in November to state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee. Mastriano got a late boost over the weekend, when Trump endorsed him.
“We’re under siege now,” Mastriano told supporters gathered at a restaurant here before the race was called. “The media doesn’t like groups of us who believe certain things. Everyone in the room should believe what we want and we should not be mocked for that.”
A retired Army colonel who has enjoyed a rapid political ascent since his election to a south-central Pennsylvania state Senate seat in 2019, Mastriano has proposed banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions. He has called for eliminating property taxes, expanding charter schools, and banning “critical race theory” in schools.
Mastriano has pledged to decertify equipment from “compromised” vendors, espousing debunked conspiracy theories. And he said during a debate that he wants all 9 million registered voters in the state to re-register — an idea that would likely run afoul of federal law. He was in Washington for the rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, though he has said he left the area before things turned violent.
As governor, he would have the power to appoint Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, who would oversee how votes are cast and counted in the 2024 election.
Mastriano’s leading rivals were former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, and former Delaware County Councilman Dave White.
The nine candidates on the ballot were the most in a Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial primary since 1978.
At its February meeting, the state GOP voted not to endorse a candidate for the first time in decades. And for much of the year, it seemed like four or even five candidates were legitimate contenders — either because they were raising millions of dollars or because they entered the race with strong name recognition among Republican voters.
In debates and on the campaign trail, the candidates showed broad agreement on policy.
They pledged to eliminate the expansion of no-excuse mail voting, which they blame for Trump’s 2020 defeat in Pennsylvania, and to enact stricter voter ID rules. They said they would curtail abortion access, withdraw the state from a regional greenhouse gas emissions compact, promote charter schools and other alternatives to traditional public education, and ban so-called “critical race theory” in K-12 schools. (Critical race theory is a graduate-level academic field of study about how race factors into American institutions that has become a catch-all term for how race is taught in schools.)
Trump loomed large over the primary. Just as Republicans in Washington quickly made amends with the former president after the Capitol riot, GOP gubernatorial hopefuls in Pennsylvania aligned with Trump and eagerly and openly sought his endorsement. Several candidates — including Barletta, White, and state Senate leader Jake Corman — traveled to Florida to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
They hired former Trump campaign staffers and consultants and, in Corman’s case, even featured one, Kellyanne Conway, in TV ads.
In mid-April, Trump issued a scathing statement denouncing McSwain as a “coward” for not prosecuting baseless claims of voter fraud. That attack seemed to stall McSwain’s momentum, at least for a time. The West Chester native had been endorsed by the influential Harrisburg-based conservative group Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, whose political committees ended up spending almost $13 million — on advertising and direct contributions — boosting his candidacy.
No other candidate came close in fund-raising. White, a wealthy HVAC contractor who gave his own campaign $5 million, also spent big on TV and gathered support from traditional party activists across the state.
Barletta struggled to raise money but entered the race with the advantage of having run for U.S. Senate in 2018 with Trump’s support, boosting his popularity among Republican voters.
But Mastriano demonstrated the strongest grassroots support — raising the most money from small-dollar donors, gathering the most signatures to get on the ballot, and drawing the biggest crowds to his campaign rallies.
As Mastriano appeared to take command of the race in its final weeks — growing his lead in the polls — Democrats tried to help put him over the top. Shapiro’s campaign ran television ads linking Mastriano to Trump, and the state Democratic Party delivered a similar message in mailers to Republican primary voters.
Some establishment Republicans, fearing Mastriano would lose big in the general election, sought to coalesce behind a single alternative. Corman and a lesser-known candidate, former U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, dropped out of the race and backed Barletta. But with ballots already printed and election day nearing, the other leading candidates were reluctant to stand down and endorse one of the others.
On Sunday, Commonwealth Partners, the group that had powered McSwain’s candidacy, called for him to quit the race and threw its support to Barletta.
But it was too late to stop Mastriano.
As voters were going to the polls on Tuesday, Trump blamed Barletta’s 2018 loss for his decision not to back the former congressman this time around, saying Barletta “ran a very bad race” that year.
“He was a little missing in action,” Trump told conservative radio host Chris Stigall. “He did not run a good race. And he got beaten pretty badly.”
At Barletta’s election night party in Hazelton, about 50 supporters gathered at a restaurant in the center of the town where he was once mayor. Barletta hadn’t yet appeared by 9 p.m., an hour after polls closed. But a Barletta campaign source said he had called Mastriano to concede.
