Trump-backed Mastriano survives; Cawthorn ousted
WASHINGTON — In the Pennsylvania governor’s race, a candidate who has spread lies about the 2020 vote count won the Republican nomination Tuesday, putting an election denier within striking distance of running a presidential battleground state in 2024.
Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, the far-right Doug Mastriano, easily won the nomination — though he was already well ahead in the polls when Trump weighed in just days before the primary.
In North Carolina, meanwhile, Rep. Madison Cawthorn lost his reelection bid Tuesday even after Trump urged voters to “give Madison a second chance!” Trump also whiffed when Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice Mcgeachin, his pick, failed to defeat Gov. Brad Little in that state’s primary. Trump is facing down another possible defeat in next week’s high-stakes governor’s primary in Georgia, where his candidate is trailing in both polls and fundraising.
Trump has made election denial a key loyalty test in the Republican Party, and that may have kneecapped his party in Pennsylvania with the victory of Mastriano.
Mastriano backed baseless reviews of the election results in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Joe Biden won by nearly 100,000 votes. He organized buses to ferry Trump supporters to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. And he says that if he’s elected, he’ll ferret out fraud partly by making every voter in the state reregister.
If Mastriano were to win in the fall, he would shape how elections are conducted in Pennsylvania — where the governor appoints the secretary of state, who oversees how elections are run.
But any move to make voters reregister would almost certainly encounter legal hurdles.
Mastriano will face Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, in the November general election. Shapiro, who was uncontested, has appeared eager to take on Mastriano, running a television ad calling Mastriano “one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters,” a move that seemed designed to boost the state senator with GOP voters.
Cawthorn, the youngest member of Congress, was ousted from office by state Sen. Chuck Edwards after a rocky first term filled with salacious headlines and scandals. Cawthorn last month was cited for carrying a handgun through an airport security checkpoint — his second such citation. In March, he was cited for driving with a revoked license after being stopped for speeding twice.
Trump endorsed Cawtown on Monday.