Laughlin, Mastriano visits spotlight GOP divide on 2020 election
The fault lines in the Republican Party over whether it’s politically advantageous and necessary to fully audit the 2020 election — or to move on from it, in one way or another — were stirred again on Wednesday at a restaurant in Bethel Park, where supporters of former President Donald Trump welcomed the state lawmaker at the center of it all.
It was clear in the makeup of the gathering that they were preparing for war with the Republican establishment, but as the group’s leader introduced state Sen. Doug Mastriano and his solo attempts to forensically investigate the election in
Pennsylvania, she raised the stakes.
“This is not a Republican Party meeting,” said M.J. Costello, leader of the Team RED movement, to a room of outcast conservatives at Al’s Cafe. “These are the people who want to hold the Republican Party accountable.
“Is there anyone in the room who thinks we had a fair election?” she asked.
Laughter ensued. No one believed that.
But maybe that’s because Dan Laughlin wasn’t in the room and hasn’t stopped to speak to the group like other potential candidates for statewide office. Mr.
Laughlin, a state senator whose district includes most of Erie County, may even be the type of Republican they’re targeting. And as he mulls a gubernatorial bid just like Mr. Mastriano, their words might end up vying for the same voters.
Mr. Laughlin, who was in Pittsburgh earlier in the day Wednesday, was the first Republican state lawmaker to speak out against his party’s movement toward a forensic audit of Mr. Trump’s loss in the battleground state. He said it would be damaging to the party, waste taxpayer dollars and wouldn’t change anything about the results.
“I stand firm in my belief that no matter what you do with those ballots, no matter how many times you look at them, unless the ink changes, the numbers aren’t going to change,” Mr. Laughlin told the PostGazette, seated at a restaurant table in Green Tree. “And I also don’t believe there was anything wrong with the machines that were used to tabulate them.”
Mr. Laughlin said that doesn’t change the fact there’s a sizable chunk of the GOP electorate that believes there was something faulty with the election, and as lawmakers, “you can’t ignore” their concerns. But it may be because they’ve been told to believe that, he noted.
An energized chunk of the GOP electorate believed it on Wednesday, and they took it out on the Republican brass who may not have been so receptive to their ardent calls for a bigtime investigation into the state’s voting systems. Organizers said it’s no longer time to be nice and professional. And because Mr. Trump cautioned against starting a third party themselves, they said they’d have to fight within their ranks.
Mr. Mastriano, they said, has been at the front of that fight — more abrasively in recent days than he’s been before. That’s because Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman took him off the audit and said he’d organize it himself with the help of another state senator, prompting an angry response from Trump supporters who want a more inyour-face investigation — one that Mr. Mastriano was trying to bring.
Mr. Mastriano recapped his efforts over the past year to the crowd; he reminisced of holding a hearing with Rudy Giuliani in Harrisburg, meeting with Mr. Trump in December and traveling to Arizona to see their audit. Mr. Corman didn’t attend any of those, he said, and “talk is cheap.”
“I don’t know why it’s so hard to convince members of our own party to do what we want to do,” Mr. Mastriano said. “If there’s nothing to hide, crack open the books.”
To test his theory, the senator asked the crowd: Who believes that Mr. Corman actually wants to audit the election? In unison, they said “no.” He told them that if they want to influence real change, they should tell leadership how they feel — but do so respectfully. The people want a forensic investigation, he insisted.
Mr. Laughlin brings more of a forward-thinking approach. He said he favors changes to the election code, like more time for counties to precanvass ballots and some voter ID provisions.
As for Act 77, the landmark law that instituted no excuse mail-in balloting in Pennsylvania, he said he’d “absolutely” vote for it again. The problems weren’t with the law, but with how the state department made changes to it unilaterally — a complaint that many Republicans echo.
Mr. Laughlin said he hasn’t personally spoken to Mr. Trump about this past election cycle, like some of his colleagues have. He said Mr. Trump lost the race fair and square, and that the results of the election were mostly in line with what he was seeing in polls and on the ground in the leadup to the 2020 contest.
None of this will be a big part of his gubernatorial campaign, which he hasn’t yet officially announced, he said.
“I’m not here to give a history lesson about 2020,” Mr. Laughlin said, adding that he thinks voters are looking for someone to unite the state and the country.