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Tag: Mastriano

  • Republicans are alarmed about a Mastriano for Senate bid. Even Trump.

    Republicans are alarmed about a Mastriano for Senate bid. Even Trump.

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    Mastriano, who attempted to overturn the 2020 election and sought to outlaw abortion with no exceptions, lost Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial contest last November by 15 percentage points. His tease of a comeback bid has sparked alarm within GOP circles that he would cost the party any conceivable chance they had of unseating Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) in 2024.

    “Trump’s not dumb,” said a top GOP donor who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about private deliberations. “He knows Mastriano will hurt him in Pennsylvania.”

    Trump has also relayed to Republicans, including at least one senator, that he would be reluctant to endorse Mastriano for Senate because of his concerns that he would pull him down, the three people said. That’s not the only reason he may stay out: A person close to Trump said it is unlikely he will be as involved in 2024 down-ballot races across the country since he is busy running himself. Trump is currently more interested in seeing who endorses him.

    Snubbing Mastriano would be a 180 from last year, when Trump defied Republican leaders in the state and D.C., and officially backed him days before the primary.

    “He regrets endorsing him in [2022],” said an adviser to Trump who was granted anonymity to speak openly. “He says, ‘Doug blew it.’”

    The adviser, along with another person close to Trump, said the former president took issue with Mastriano embracing a platform that included no abortion exceptions, including for the life of the mother. The person close to Trump insisted that was not how Mastriano presented his position privately to the former president. Though Mastriano did state his no-exceptions position in a primary debate prior to Trump’s endorsement, the adviser said that Trump never would have endorsed had he been more aware of Mastriano’s support for that policy.

    Trump, after appointing the Supreme Court justices needed to overturn Roe v. Wade, has nevertheless taken to social media to blame GOP losses in the midterms on Republicans who “firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother.”

    The Trump campaign declined to provide a comment for this story.

    In the conversation with the senator, which took place in recent weeks, Trump expressed reservations about Mastriano being a “drag” on him as the nominee, according to a GOP strategist familiar with the discussion. Those reservations extend to others associated with the Pennsylvania Republican. Trump, according to an adviser, is “done” with Jenna Ellis, a former Trump attorney who pushed for Mastriano during the primary and served as a lawyer for the then-president during his post-election efforts to contest the 2020 vote.

    Mastriano did not respond to a request for comment. Ellis said that since declining to work for Trump’s 2024 campaign, she has been “called a porn star, sexually harassed, and stalked in the media by the unnamed male ‘Trump Advisors.’”

    “If President Trump was so ‘done’ with me, why did he literally call me two days ago?” she added. “These ‘advisors’ are clearly misrepresenting their positions and proximity in an effort to intimidate women who stand on principle by attacking them on social media and anonymously in the press.”

    Trump’s machinations in the Keystone State could have a major effect on the GOP’s efforts to take back the Senate. Republicans need to flip just two seats to win the chamber and Casey is among their top targets. After a disappointing midterm election, the Senate Republican campaign arm sees Mastriano as unelectable. The group is recruiting ex-hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick, who narrowly lost the Pennsylvania Senate primary to celebrity physician Mehmet Oz in 2022, to challenge Casey.

    “Republicans are scared to death of Mastriano being on the ballot again,” said Josh Novotney, a GOP consultant in Pennsylvania. “He tanked the entire ticket last year.”

    It is far from certain that Trump’s reservations about Mastriano mean he would endorse McCormick in the primary. Last year Trump backed Oz while blasting McCormick as a “liberal Wall Street Republican.” The former president also has his own intraparty politics to consider. If the primary is still competitive during Pennsylvania’s primary in late April — or state lawmakers move up the voting date like they are considering — Trump may determine he needs to avoid disappointing Mastriano’s base.

    Trump has had no problem abandoning allies in the past after they’ve lost elections. Last year, he decided not to endorse former Rep. Lou Barletta in his bid for governor of Pennsylvania after he had backed him in an unsuccessful Senate run four years prior. Trump privately called Barletta a “loser,” according to multiple sources.

    Were Trump merely to stay out of any potential primary between Mastriano and McCormick, many Republican officials in the state and nationally would be relieved.

    “There’s a lot of concern amongst party leaders about the effect that Mastriano would have on the down-ballot,” said Rob Gleason, former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party. “I don’t think [Trump] is going to endorse anybody. He has to worry about himself.”

    Trump was ambivalent about Mastriano before he endorsed him. Mastriano had been a loyal soldier in the MAGA movement, using his position as a state senator to become the face of the effort to overturn the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. But Trump wanted more action from Mastriano on his promises surrounding an audit of the election results, and some of Trump’s advisers were concerned that Mastriano was unelectable.

    Several Republicans in Trump’s orbit believe the former president ultimately endorsed Mastriano because he wanted to burnish his win-loss record in Republican primaries. Trump’s move enraged GOP officials in Pennsylvania who were attempting to mount a last-ditch effort to stop Mastriano in hopes of avoiding an onslaught in November.

    This time around, Trump’s circle is more dubious about Mastriano’s chances of winning a general election, believing he simply can not beat Casey. A recent poll by Franklin & Marshall College found that Casey leads Mastriano by 16 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup, while he is ahead of McCormick by 7 points.

    Mastriano has also come under blame by some people around Trump for contributing to Oz’s loss, a sore spot for the former president, who himself has blamed his wife and others for counseling him to back Oz.

    But there are still a handful of Mastriano fans in Trump world. Christina Bobb, who has worked as a lawyer for Trump, was a featured speaker at a rally Mastriano held in south-central Pennsylvania last month. She praised Mastriano as a MAGA warrior who bravely fought to rectify the 2020 election.

    She told the crowd that she had talked to Trump before the event. “He goes, ‘Tell him I love them, tell him I love them all,” she said.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Doug Mastriano and his super fans aren’t yet willing to let go

    Doug Mastriano and his super fans aren’t yet willing to let go

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    election 2022 pennsylvania governor 13996

    “Doug Mastriano won that election. It was a false election, and I think the people know that it was a false election,” she said as she walked through the parking lot in search of her car following the rally’s conclusion, the harsh mid-March wind hitting her face. “People in Pennsylvania know.”

    In a midterm cycle that was disappointing for the GOP across the country, Pennsylvania Republicans were among the biggest losers. Along with Mastriano’s flogging, GOP candidates fell short in the Senate contest and the majority of state House races.

    Establishment Republicans have found a silver lining amid the grimness: Perhaps there will be a reckoning. Even diehard supporters of former President Donald Trump, they’ve reasoned, are finally sick of losing.

    The Senate GOP’s campaign arm has a new chair, Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who has vowed to wade into primaries in order to nominate candidates who can win general elections. And in Pennsylvania, he is courting Dave McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO who narrowly lost the Senate primary in 2022, to run against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. McCormick is taking steps to prepare for a possible campaign, including releasing a book Tuesday, launching a new political action committee and attending GOP events in the state recently. In a sign that he’s not joking around about intervening, Daines last week attacked Mastriano as unelectable after news came out that he was considering a Senate run.

    But while the moves have given hope to party officials and donors, the testimony of voters like Crowe show just how far the GOP still must go. In this corner of the political world in Pennsylvania, it’s the establishment — not the MAGAverse — that needs course-correction.

    “The Senate reelection campaign in D.C. is like, ‘We don’t want Mastriano to run.’ Well, you don’t have a say in that there, fella,” Mastriano told the crowd at his rally over the weekend. “They can’t win any state races without the Walk as Free People movement, right? They can’t win without us. So they better be ginger.”

    Mastriano’s rally was part-revival, part-reunion for his fans. Held in a small town in south-central Pennsylvania, it was also a demonstration of what McCormick and his mainstream allies in the party could be up against if he enters the Senate race.

    A few hundred people attended the event, where Mastriano promoted a slate of Republicans running for local office this year. In addition to the candidates, speakers included Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.), Trump lawyer Christina Bobb and conservative media personality Wendy Bell. The main message was that MAGA-ism isn’t dead. The language spoken, however, was conspiracy theories.

    • On the reliability of the 2020 election: “Where are these numbers coming from? Nothing matched. It didn’t work,” said Bobb.
    • On Sen. John Fetterman’s recovery from clinical depression at an in-patient facility: “Do we even know if Fetterman is even alive right now?” asked Lori Phillips, a volunteer for Mastriano who attended the rally.
    • On Covid-19: “China should be held for war crimes, and maybe if our government — if [Anthony] Fauci and all those guys — were involved in it just as much, maybe they should be held for war crimes,” said retiree Larry Haugh, another rally-goer.

    In an interview Monday, McCormick said Mastriano would not factor into his decision about whether to run again for the Senate.
    “It’s a personal choice,” he said. “It will be based on whether I believe I can win and really contribute as a senator from Pennsylvania. And how other people think about it and what they do is not going to be a primary consideration.”

    As he weighs the viability of a Senate run, McCormick also said the GOP must work to increase voter registration and encourage Republicans to vote by mail. In what appeared to be a subtle knock on Mastriano, he added, “I think it’s important we pick candidates who can win the primary and the general, whether it’s for the Senate or for governor or for other races around the country.”

    Democrats, who last year elevated Trump-aligned candidates in several GOP primaries in hopes of facing the least formidable opponents possible, are already wading into the nascent Pennsylvania contest. The day before McCormick’s book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” was released, the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm put out a document highlighting past attacks against McCormick from fellow Republicans. The same day, a liberal polling firm released a survey showing Mastriano leading McCormick in a hypothetical primary.

    In recent weeks, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee officials have had conversations with former campaign consultants for now-Gov. Josh Shapiro, who beat Mastriano last fall. According to a person familiar with the talks, they centered on Mastriano’s strengths in a GOP primary.

    At Mastriano’s rally, a number of attendants were skeptical of McCormick.

    “He was a RINO in my opinion,” said nurse Joy Whitesel. “He just seemed too rehearsed for me.”

    “I hadn’t even heard of him until he announced he was running for office,” said health care worker Rebecca Evans.

    But it wasn’t just McCormick who elicited apprehension, but also the political remedies he and other traditional Republicans were pushing in the wake of the 2022 letdown. Though multiple Republican leaders, including Mastriano, have argued that the party needs to embrace mail-in voting, several of the rally-goers were reluctant about going in that direction.

    “I don’t agree with mail-in voting because it’s so easy to become fraudulent,” said Whitesel, adding that she wants Mastriano to run for the Senate and isn’t concerned about his electability “because his loss was only by mail-in votes — he won the in-person votes — and he got zero support from the RINOs.”

    For McCormick, this all raises tricky questions: mainly, is there an actual path forward to winning his party’s nod, especially with Trump running for the presidency. During last year’s election, McCormick unsuccessfully sought the former president’s endorsement and hired several of his ex-aides. For the time being, he seems to be taking a different tack. Though McCormick applauded Trump’s approach to China and the economy in his book, he also recounted a private conversation in which Trump told him, “You know you can’t win unless you say the election was stolen.”

    McCormick said he “made it clear to him that I couldn’t do that. Three days later, Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz” for the Senate.

    Asked whether he supports Trump in the presidential primary, McCormick said there are “great people” who are going to run, but that he has not made a decision yet to back any candidate.

    “I want to see how the primary goes,” he said. “I also am a strong proponent of hopefully a vision for the future that’s positive — more looking forward than backwards.”

    Whether looking forward — not backward — is what GOP primary voters want is less clear.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Mastriano, unchastened, says he is weighing a Senate run

    Mastriano, unchastened, says he is weighing a Senate run

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    In a sit-down interview, Mastriano, who rarely speaks with the mainstream media, made it clear that he is not finished with his quest to win higher office and transform the Republican Party along the way. He said he is “praying” about whether to go forward with a potential Senate run in 2024. After God, his wife, Rebbie, will have the final word he said.

    “We’ve seen people in the past, other Republican gubernatorial candidates, they rise and they disappear when they lose. Why?” he asked. “You have people that love you and support you.”

    If he pulls the trigger, Mastriano would run in a primary for the right to take on Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, an institutional figure in the state. Virtually no one in the Pennsylvania GOP establishment is eager for that matchup. But Mastriano said Casey is a letdown to the anti-abortion cause. Casey’s father, former Gov. Robert Casey Sr., signed abortion regulations into law that went all the way to a landmark Supreme Court case, where they were largely kept intact.

    “I think he’s a huge disappointment. He’s nothing like his dad,” he said. “His dad was more pro-life than most Republicans.”

    Until now, Mastriano’s future plans have been a mystery within political circles. He has few relationships with party leaders and eschews traditional consultants, leaving it all but impossible for GOP officials to know what he’s thinking. In that vacuum of information, rumors have been swirling that he might be eyeing a challenge against Republican Rep. John Joyce, whose seat is safely red. But he ruled that out: “Congressman Joyce and myself are friends.”

    What Mastriano ultimately decides to do will illuminate just how chastened the most diehard supporters of former President Donald Trump are after the 2022 midterms. Usually, losses of that magnitude drive people out of electoral politics. But the last three federal elections have been discouraging for Republicans, and each time, they’ve shown little desire to course correct. Trump himself is campaigning again in 2024 and remains the frontrunner for the nomination. Whether the GOP finally does move on will be determined, in large part, by how Republican primary voters treat potential and declared candidates like him and Mastriano.

    Inside Mastriano’s small legislative quarters, an anti-abortion protest sign sat in the corner. Wearing his trademark spurs and a 3rd Infantry Division ball cap, he said that his fans have been encouraging him to run for the Senate. But he was open about the fact that those encouraging him aren’t Republican dignitaries.

    “It’s mostly supporters across the state,” he said. “Nobody with big names have come out and said, ‘Doug, you need to think about this.’ Just people like you and me.”

    In fact, Mastriano’s flirtation with another statewide campaign is sure to give heart palpitations to GOP leaders. When a blue wave swept across Pennsylvania in 2022 — Democrats won the gubernatorial race, Senate race and a majority of state House contests — most Republican officials pointed the finger at Mastriano. His staunchly anti-abortion stance that allowed for no exceptions, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, and his appearance at the capitol the day of the Jan. 6 attack alarmed many swing voters.

    After staying out of primaries last year, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm intends to get involved this time around. Party leaders at the national and state level have aggressively courted Dave McCormick, the former hedge fund CEO who narrowly lost the Senate primary in 2022, to run again against Casey. Though McCormick sought Trump’s endorsement and employed former Trump aides during his campaign, Republicans believe he has a mainstream appeal that would attract suburban voters.

    Mastriano declined to weigh in on the possibility of a McCormick bid: “Unbelievably, I’ve never met him, so I’d hate to make a judgment on him without meeting him since he’s probably going to run.” He also speculated that there could be a number of Republican candidates who vie for the Senate next year, though he declined to name names: “I think I’ll have a few people also running that I know and like.”

    As he considers what’s next, Mastriano is analyzing what went wrong in 2022, even showing a willingness to bend on certain political tactics that, last cycle, his party shunned.

    Republicans, he said, “have to embrace no-excuse mail-in voting.” That they did not is the reason he thinks he lost. He said he knew during the campaign that it was going to cost him. “It’s just so — repugnant’s the wrong word — it’s just so antithetical to how I view elections,” he said.

    Mastriano said he was sure he was going to beat now-Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro right up until Election Day. He didn’t buy the polls showing him down badly.

    “Because I’d go to these rallies and people would say, ‘We’ve never seen this.’ In Josh Shapiro’s home county the night before the election, I had over 1,000 people — we stopped counting at 1,000. I saw no Shapiro signs in his own county,” he said. “Here I am in Montgomery County the night before the election, I’m like, we got this. The rally was just electric.”

    Mastriano did not formally concede until five days after the election.

    He acknowledged that taking on Casey could be a challenge.

    “How do I beat the Casey name? ‘Mastriano’?” he said with a grin. “At least they know who I am now.”

    In the meantime, Mastriano is taking steps to position himself for a possible run. He is holding a rally this Saturday in central Pennsylvania, which will feature Trump lawyer Christina Bobb and conservative media personality Wendy Bell as speakers. He led a hearing on the East Palestine train derailment over the border from the incident in western Pennsylvania, and he successfully pushed a committee he chairs to subpoena Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw to testify. He also hired Dan Cox, the unsuccessful Maryland gubernatorial nominee, as his chief-of-staff.

    Toward the end of the interview, Mastriano said Cox was part of his “A team.” As it happens, Cox’s hiring is also a reason political insiders think he might want to run for higher office again.

    “Hmm,” he said, laughing. “Gute erkennung. As the Germans say, ‘Good deduction.’”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )