ERI, PA for the stolen election of Donald Trump.
Less than a week before Tuesday’s state primary, polls show that Senator Doug Mastriano, one of the state’s central figures in the former president’s bid to cancel the 2020 election, is emerging as the clear leader in the race. The Republican Party for Governor. Senate nominee Katie Barnett, an underfunded conservative commentator who has never held a public office, made a surprising late jump in the race, which was dominated by two big-run rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.
Mr Mastriano has made allegations of electoral fraud a key element in his bid to head a country that could be decisive in the 2024 presidential race. Ms Barnett has a history of inflammatory remarks, including repeatedly calling former President Barack Obama a supporter of Islam, which she said should be banned, and ridiculous writing about the “homosexual program.” Both candidates supported each other, creating an important alliance.
Republicans are now worried about losing both races in November if primary voters accept such candidates out of the mass stream.
Several of Mr. Mastriano’s Republican rivals have been gathering in private conferences in recent days in an attempt to stop him at the last minute. Everyone agrees that he would be harassing the party, although Mr Mastriano has not yet suffered serious coordinated attacks. Two rivals, State Senator Jake Corman and former MP Lou Barletta, hosted a joint event on Thursday, suggesting the field could soon consolidate, at least slightly.
Democrats harbor their own fears: that the bleak political environment of 2022 could still come under the control of Republicans, who in a less hostile climate may seem ineligible.
“Like many Democrats, I am a schizophrenic on this issue – I support the madman, because it gives us the best chance to win. But at the same time, it can give us a crazy senator or a crazy governor, or both, “said Mike Mikus, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist.
For years, Pennsylvania was one of the nation’s typical swing states, with the clearest path to power midway between the Democratic and Republican parties. This year’s vacancies are because Republican Sen. Pat Toomie is retiring and Gov. Tom Wolfe, a Democrat, has a limited term.
“Pennsylvania is not doing very well with this extreme on either side,” said Rob Gleeson, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania who was a major supporter of Mr. Trump in the state in 2016, but is now worried for Mr. Mastriano in 2022. “Whatever you say, it’s kind of like a country in the middle.”
In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state, a position that oversees the state election, which means that whoever wins the governor’s post will oversee the administration of one of the most coveted rocking states in the 2024 presidential race.
For months, the Senate race has been seen mainly as a heavyweight bout between Dr. Oz, the television personality, and Mr. McCormick, the former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund. They and their allies have spent nearly $ 40 million on television commercials.
Ms. Barnett, who is running for the Chamber in 2020 in a Philadelphia suburb and lost nearly 20 percentage points, until recently was rated somewhere between being late and a star in the race. But a poll by Fox News on Tuesday found the race a virtual tripartite draw.
To date, Ms. Barnett’s growth has been almost entirely organic, fueled by her heated debates, conservative media appearances, and compelling life story, which she told in her book Nothing to Lose, All to Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America ”
“A by-product of rape,” as she herself describes when her mother was just 11, Ms. Barnett talks about growing up on a pig farm in Alabama without running water and how her success is the story of the American dream that is now at risk.
Over the past week, she has received important institutional support: the approval of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Liszt on Tuesday and a $ 2 million promotional blitz funded by the Growth Club, which broadcasts her up-the-bootstraps message across the state.
The Growth Club, one of the biggest spenders in Republican politics, recently feuded with Mr. Trump after running ads attacking JD Vance, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, even after Mr. Trump approved it. Mr. Vance won this primary election, and Mr. Trump backed Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.
In a way, Mrs Barnett’s candidacy is a test of whether the movement Mr Trump has chosen has taken its own life. “MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” Ms. Barnett said in an April debate.
Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick were courting Mr. Trump’s supporters, though it was awkward. Dr. Oz was booed at a Trump rally, Mr. McCormick was rejected by Mr. Trump, and both are facing carpet packaging issues in a state where they have not recently lived full-time.
Ms. Barnett has offered herself as an authentic and unfiltered version of what the Republican base wants. “Listen, this time you don’t have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils,” she said during another debate.
She also made it clear that there will be no spin in the middle if she reaches the autumn campaign.
“When I join the general, I have no intention of pretending to be moderate,” Ms. Barnett said in a recent radio interview. “I’m not.”
In the race for governor, the Democratic’s alleged candidate, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, began airing television commercials last week featuring a narrator highlighting Mr Mastriano’s conservative qualities: “If Mastriano wins, it’s a victory for what “Donald Trump is standing up.” Mr Trump did not support this race.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mastriano campaigned in Erie, Pennsylvania, along with Jenna Ellis, a former adviser in Trump’s campaign efforts to cancel the 2020 election.
“Doug Mastriano, I like to say, is Donald Trump of Pennsylvania,” Ms. Ellis said.
Mr Mastriano was a key figure in Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn in Pennsylvania, a state he lost by 81,000 votes. As a freshman U.S. senator, he held a hearing in November 2020 with Ms. Ellis and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, visited the White House shortly thereafter, and remained in close contact with Trump’s team.
He posted a Facebook event offering bus trips to Washington on January 6, 2021, and his campaign said he had spent at least $ 3,000 renting buses. But he claims he left before the protest escalated into violence. In Erie he defended the rally.
“Is it like God to have mercy on your soul if you dare to go and exercise your freedom under the First Amendment to go to the District of Columbia on January 6?” Said Mr. Mastriano. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Andy Riley, one of three members of the Republican National Committee of Pennsylvania, is among those quietly vying to unite Republicans over an alternative to Mr Mastriano. Mr Riley, who did not support the race, said the advertisements for Shapiro’s campaign had “raised concerns” and sparked debate.
“The fact that Democrats are running pro-Mastriano ads tells us that they believe he would be the weakest candidate,” said Charlie Gerow, a longtime Republican operative in Pennsylvania who is running for governor with low single-digit results. .
Interviewed during a stint at a bakery in Erie, Mr Barletta, a former congressman who defeated a Democratic president in 2010, called himself Mastriano’s strongest alternative.
“It was me and Doug Mastriano at the top of every poll,” Mr Barletta said. “Now people have to make a decision and many of those indecisive have to look at who they think has a better chance of winning Josh Shapiro.
Bill Maxwayne, who was the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania during the Trump administration, is also a candidate and has spent as much on television as the rest of the industry combined, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. But he is also the only candidate in the race who will be attacked by Mr Trump.
“Don’t vote for Bill Maxwain, a coward who disappoints our country,” Mr Trump said last month in a statement attacking Mr Maxwain for not insisting enough on Mr Trump’s false allegations of election fraud in Pennsylvania. .
Mr Gleason, the party’s former chairman, supported Mr Maxwayne in one way or another, fearing that Mr Mastriano would lose the general election. “It would be toxic,” he said.
A spokesman for Brendan Boyle, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said this week he was approached in the House of Representatives by colleagues from other states, excited that Republicans could choose two such far-right nominees. But he said he still remembers 2010, when the seemingly ineligible Republicans won the Tea Party, and then 2016, when Mr. Trump took over Pennsylvania and the presidency.
“I should be glad that the Republicans seem to be on the verge of failing both races,” said Boyle. But, he added, “I’m very nervous that two Republican extremists will be elected governor and senator.”
For her part, Ms. Barnett, who appeared this week in a podcast by Stephen Bannon, a former Trump adviser, dismissed Republican fears it was “too MAGA” to win in November.
Do these people have a crystal ball? She asked. “Are they incarnate?” How do they know? ”
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