Mastriano’s crusades wear thin with Pennsylvanian conservatives
Salena Zito
CHAMBERSBURG, Pennsylvania — For a brief moment on Tuesday, it appeared that Doug Mastriano, the Republican politician who represents this historic borough in Franklin County as their state senator, had announced on social media he was seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.
It turns out that the tweet announcement was a fake. The man who has run and lost a Republican congressional primary in 2018, served as this region’s state senator since 2019, and got clobbered in last year’s gubernatorial race by 15 percentage points is not running for the seat — at least not yet.
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Last month, he did tell a Politico reporter he was talking to God about whether or not he would run.
Jackie Kulback, southwest caucus chairwoman for the Pennsylvania GOP, shrugged and said, “Never in the history of American politics has God ever told a politician no when it comes to running for office.”
Kulback, who is also chairwoman of the Cambria County Republican Party, said the idea that Mastriano would even entertain a primary run for the U.S. Senate frustrates her,. She said she spent months after he won the primary last May pleading with him and his team to run on issues that people were concerned about, such as inflation and crime, invest in television ads, and he could not rely on Trump voters to turn out for him.
“I was pretty frustrated with Mastriano’s nonsense, and really, I stuck by him until the end,” she said.
She was rewarded for her efforts when someone placed an oversize digital billboard along the main drag in suburban Johnstown after the election that read in bright yellow, all-capital letters, “TELL US JACKIE, WHO DID YOU VOTE FOR? CAMBRIA COUNTY WANTS TO KNOW.” It sat on that highway, blinking out the accusation of disloyalty for over a month.
When she called Mastriano’s team, it denied culpability.
“This is what’s crazy is that there’s a lot of people like me who volunteer and give their time, and then you get attacked,” she said. Whether it was Mastriano or someone else who supported him, she said it is clear whoever did that was trying to bully her. “It was placed there to try and intimidate me.”
Which explains why some voters in his district were happy to talk about their frustrations with Mastriano but loath to give their names. In short, there were several people hesitant to say anything in print out of concern of the pushback from his devotees.
Far from an establishment figure, Kulback said the issue with Mastriano is that he has taken such a “far, far right” view on so many things. “The list is just endless,” she said. “There’s no way he can walk any of that back.”
It is fair to argue both Mastriano and Trump contributed to the massive blue wave that hit this key battleground state last November, beginning with Trump’s endorsement of Mastriano in a crowded field during the primary to the former president coming to Latrobe in the final days of the general election to reinforce that endorsement.
Add in Trump’s attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin at that Latrobe event — elected officials whom the base loves — and his tease of his own announcement for president, it was all too much for voters weary of Trump’s nonstop talk about himself and not about the things that concern them.
By Election Day last year, what was once magic in this state in 2016 for the former president was turning into his third loss in a row. He had lost congressional races in the 2018 midterm elections, his own race in 2020, and the gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, and state House majority last year.
Mastriano was a bridge too far for many staunch conservatives. His views on abortion, his attendance at the capitol on Jan. 6, and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania were just some of the reasons they either sat on their hands or voted for Josh Shapiro.
They were concerned about crime and inflation; he was running a crusade.
No one really knows what Mastriano intends to do. Does he milk this for all it’s worth, for all the attention and opportunities provided him at the revivals he speaks at? Does he decide to primary Rep. John Joyce for the 13th
Congressional District, or does a higher being tell him he should run for Senate?
The latest Franklin and Marshal poll of 643 registered Pennsylvania Republican voters shows that in a general election matchup, three-term Democrat Bob Casey leads Mastriano by a commanding 47% to 31%. On the other hand, if David McCormick of Pittsburgh, the former hedge CEO who narrowly lost to Dr. Mehmet Oz in last year’s primary by under 900 votes, were to enter the race as many expect him to, Casey’s number falls to 42% and McCormick, who hasn’t campaigned in a year, is at 35%.