PHILADELPHIA — The summer hearings on the Jan. 6 riot have reinforced the direct line between Pennsylvania and the attack that tried to subvert American democracy.
This fall’s election will test whether there are political consequences for the Pennsylvania Republicans who played significant roles on Jan. 6 — or if they’ll grow more empowered ahead of the next presidential race, when Donald Trump could again be on the ballot and Pennsylvania will again be a pivotal battleground in deciding who wins the presidency.
GOP state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who helped push “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theories and crossed police barricades at the Capitol on Jan. 6, is running for governor. If he wins, the secretary of state he appoints will oversee the 2024 election. He says he didn’t enter the Capitol that day, but has made clear his disdain for the lawful 2020 result.
U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, of York County, played a leading role in pushing false election claims that reached the country’s top law enforcement officials, including one based on a YouTube video involving Italian satellites changing votes. He could become a powerful figure in Congress if he wins reelection and the GOP takes control of the House because he leads the hard-right Freedom Caucus, which has often exerted significant influence over the GOP agenda.
Republican Senate nominee Mehmet Oz has been endorsed by Trump and given credence to the former president’s false claims, saying we “cannot move on” from 2020. Oz has blasted the Jan. 6 hearings as a distraction designed to “attack one half of the political spectrum.” He would have a vote on the certification of the 2024 presidential race if he defeats Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Either winner will replace Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who broke with Trump after the 2020 election and forcefully defended Pennsylvania’s election results.
Republican control of the U.S. House, meanwhile, hinges on a handful of swing districts, including several in Pennsylvania. A GOP majority could make the 2024 election more vulnerable if there’s another push to subvert the will of the voters. Most of the chamber’s Republicans — including 8 of Pennsylvania’s 9 GOP House members — voted to throw out Pennsylvania’s 2020 results, but were overruled by the chamber’s Democratic majority. (Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick was the lone Republican exception from Pennsylvania).
And in Harrisburg, the state legislature could also have significant power over 2024′s election. GOP leaders in the statehouse wrote to Congress in 2020 asking them to delay certification of victory.
The hearings have shown that a small group of officials, from both parties, proved to be critical circuit breakers against Trump’s effort to claim an election he had lost, refusing to “find” the votes he wanted (in Georgia), to endorse debunked conspiracy theories (at the Department of Justice), embrace evidence-free claims (Arizona), or simply stop counting (Pennsylvania).
Those examples also illustrate how easily things could have turned out differently, if more compliant or weaker-willed officials were in place. And Trump-allied candidates are now seeking key offices.
The midterms on Nov. 8, however, appear likely to turn on more immediate, and more tangible, everyday concerns. Republicans argue — and much public polling backs them up — voters are far less worried about looking back at Jan. 6 and more concerned with the inflation when they go to the grocery store or balance their budgets. Polls suggest the election will mainly be a referendum on a deeply unpopular Biden, his Democratic allies, and the state of the U.S. economy.
But this will also be the first chance for Pennsylvania voters to judge their public officials since the Capitol attack — when Pennsylvania was one of two states formally targeted by congressional Republicans during the certification of the results.
“2022 is pivotal for the fate of democracy not just for Pennsylvania, but throughout the country,” said Emily Rodriguez, a strategist with Protect Democracy, a progressive group that says it aims to fight authoritarianism. “The way that our election laws work in the United States, the governor and the legislature have an extraordinary amount of power when it comes to respecting the popular vote.”
Election deniers are also seeking critical offices for governor or secretary of state in other key swing states where Trump applied pressure, including Arizona and Michigan. But Mastriano is perhaps the most prominent, and Pennsylvania is the biggest prize in presidential battlegrounds, in some analysts’ eyes.
Trump is signaling he is likely to run for president again, and has not given up on using his leverage to overpower other officials. Just this month, he called the speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly to try to reverse the state’s 2020 result, and in a speech in Washington, D.C., Tuesday he reiterated the lie that he had won.
Republicans argue that the hearings and warnings about democracy are an overwrought distraction from the economy. They have largely ignored the content of hearings led by a panel of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans.
“When is the @HouseDemocrats primetime hearing on inflation?” the House Republican Twitter account posted during last week’s primetime hearing.
“I just don’t understand the obsession that the Democrat Party has with Donald Trump,” said Rob Gleason, former Republican chairman in Pennsylvania. “All that does is help the Republican Party.”
Voters, he said, don’t want to hear about the past, they want to see today’s problems fixed.
Perry is heavily favored to win reelection. So are nearly all of his fellow Pennsylvania Republicans who voted to overthrow the 2020 result, because most represent safely red districts. The GOP is favored to keep control of the state legislature.
That has put even more weight on the governor’s race, where the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, has vowed to be a firewall against false election claims and attempts to manipulate results.
Mastriano, Shapiro recently tweeted, “took part in an attempted coup — and now he wants to be our Governor. We can’t let him. He’s too dangerous.”
Mastriano, like other Republicans, has pointed to inflation as the key issue on the ballot and dismissed talk of Jan. 6. In a June podcast interview, Mastriano, who has been subpoenaed by the committee, compared investigations and arrests around the riot to Nazi crackdowns.
“What we’re seeing in America now makes McCarthy in the ‘50s look like an amateur,” he told Ben Stein.
Neither party is likely to put Jan. 6 at the forefront of their campaigns, because even Democrats acknowledge that inflation and prices are the public’s No. 1 concern this fall.
But some Democrats, including Shapiro, have tied Jan. 6 to issues such as abortion, voting rights and guns — as part of a thread that they say shows the GOP is too extreme to govern.
“If you’re concerned about the economy or abortion or inflation or the future of contraception or gay marriage ... you’ve got to be concerned that the party that wants to turn back the clock on those things may just steal an election,” said Brad Woodhouse, a Democratic strategist and co-chair of the Defend Democracy Project.
That kind of messaging, he argued, could be especially effective with the kind of swing voters who have recently favored Democrats, but might be more likely to sit out this election.
Privately, some Democratic strategists say that talking about Jan. 6 doesn’t do much because opinions about the Capitol attack and Trump have long been cemented. While a CNN poll released this week found that 54% of Americans said they believe democracy is under attack, there was little change from earlier this year — and the share of Republicans who believe that was dropping.
The committee last week promised additional hearings in September, ensuring that the riot will be back in the national spotlight, and possibly primetime television, just as campaigns heat up.
“Let me assure every one of you this: our Committee understands the gravity of this moment, the consequences for our nation,” the panel’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said to conclude Thursday’s hearing, the last of the summer. “We have much work yet to do.”
Yet with economic concerns worrying so many voters, a recession, continued inflation, or a late summer spike in gas prices could sink Democrats and, in some cases, elevate candidates who have scorned lawful election results.
