Mastriano is a disaster for Pa. Republicans
— but the party deserves it
MCMURRAY, Pa. — The first time Cheryl Rubio ever heard of Doug Mastriano was when she caught his interview on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” television show. This was shortly after the retired Army colonel won a special election in the state Senate’s 33rd District to fill the seat vacated by former Sen. Rich Alloway, a Chambersburg Republican who resigned in 2019.
“He just appeared to me as a very strong individual; he came across as bright and informative. I looked him up, and I just read about him and thought he was interesting,” the small business owner said.
Ms. Rubio, 66 and a Republican primary voter, explained that in general elections she does not vote straight Republican: “I split my vote all of the time; I vote for the individual. However, in a primary here we have to vote in the party we are registered, so I did my homework and thought he was the best for the job for the general election in November.”
She wasn’t alone. Despite nine GOP candidates on the ballot battling it out for their party’s nomination, the truth is there was no battle at all: Mr. Mastriano, the first-term state legislator, earned just a smidge fewer votes than all his rivals combined.
And Republicans here were really juiced to vote in this year’s primary: GOP turnout hit 38%, the highest primary turnout in a midterm election in decades.
Mr. Mastriano’s rapid ascent in Pennsylvania Republican politics took an odd path. He seems to have hired no strategists to help him beat the other well-funded candidates for governor. He just hit the road and held tent revival-type rallies in places none of the experts sent their candidates.
And he used Facebook. A lot. Former state party chairman Rob Gleason said Mr. Mastriano knew the base, something every strategist and advisor including himself — he helped former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain — miscalculated: “He not only understood them; he outworked everyone else on the ballot,” Mr. Gleason admitted.
Mr. Gleason also admits that a weak state party — including way too many strategists making money off of candidates who had no chance to win — made Mr. Mastriano’s win more likely.
“I was in denial about that at the beginning, but as things went on, I found it to be difficult; I didn’t realize how entrenched his supporters were and how out of touch everyone else was with them,” Mr. Gleason said.
Ask a Republican why he or she voted for Mastriano, and the answer is often “Why not?”
But what do we know about him really? I’ve called Mr. Mastriano directly several times to get that answer, to no avail. But his voicemail message pretty much says everything:
“Hi. You know who you called. Leave a message. Maybe they’ll call you back. Then again, maybe they won’t. That’s how life is. Point is you’ve done what you can.”
There’s a deep “Frank Underwood” cynicism in that message — but I indeed have done what I can: Text messages are delivered but never answered, and his Bucks County event a few days before the election physically barred any journalist from entering — a situation that was repeated at nearly all of his rallies.
I called the Republican Governors Association, the campaign committee that helps Republican gubernatorial candidates raise money for their campaigns, and they told me they only had an email address for a Mastriano staffer who, to date, has yet to respond.
What we do know about Mr. Mastriano is that his rigid ideology hovers on the fringe of American politics. He has appeared with proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory; his speeches are chock full of religious nationalism; he led the charge to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory here; and at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, he pushed for a public registry of people who had tested positive for the virus.
Mr. Mastriano’s ploy to run as a mini-Trump has holes: He bars the press coverage Mr. Trump relished, and he has no interest in building a coalition to win, instead apparently believing God will guide him to victory with only the right wing at his side. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, always intuitively understood that building coalitions was the only way to win.
Mr. Trump could get away with his quips because he had years of experience doing just that in the public eye and he never took himself too seriously. Mr. Mastriano is serious about everything he says and expects everyone to take him seriously.
But the things Mr. Mastriano is serious about — like re-litigating the 2020 election — are wildly out of touch with the things voters are concerned about, like education, inflation, taxes, roads and bridges and economic opportunity. People rarely vote for the past; they are always living and looking in the moment and towards the future.
Many Republican primary voters I interviewed said they were much more focused on the U.S. Senate race than the gubernatorial race, admitting they voted for the name they knew most when they went into the voting booth.
It was hard not to know who Mr. Mastriano was; you either tripped over one of his thousands of yard signs or got a mailer from either Democrat Josh Shapiro or the Commonwealth Partners telling you not to vote for him. We all know the “reverse effect” those efforts tend to have — which is why Mr. Shapiro paid to mail them.
Both Terry Madonna and Keystone College political science professor Jeff Brauer agree that Republicans are going to have a very big year in this November’s midterm election cycle; they also both agree that Mr. Mastriano will be one of the rare Republicans who will struggle even to get near the winners’ circle.
And that is a good thing. Don’t be surprised if whoever eventually wins the U.S. Senate primary will be among several Republicans who will find ways never to appear on stage with Mr. Mastriano and who will avoid at all costs having to respond to whatever outrageous things he says on the campaign trail.
That is, of course, if the press ever hears it.
How Republicans got to this point is shameful, and the rot starts with the consultant class and continues throughout what was once a great state party apparatus. The Pennsylvania Republican Party needs to move its offices out of Harrisburg and into someplace like Bedford or Potter County, where they can really meet and understand who their base is — because it certainly isn’t the people they socialize with at cocktail parties who tell them how smart they are.