PA-Gov: Surprising Absolutely No One, TFG Officially Endorses Insurrectionist GQPer In MAGA Primary

Josh Shapiro, the Democratic attorney general of Pennsylvania, is employing a familiar but risky tactic in that state’s governor’s race: He’s paying for a TV ad that appears intended to help one of his opponents in the Republican primary.

The opponent, a QAnon-linked retired military officer and state senator, Doug Mastriano, is leading the nine-person field by about 10 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls in the race. Mr. Mastriano’s rise has alarmed many Republicans in and outside the state.

Some Shapiro advisers had been toying with the ad maneuver for months, although the leadership of the campaign did not discuss the idea until it was clear that Mr. Mastriano was ahead. Mr. Shapiro is running unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Public polls have shown Mr. Shapiro faring better in a head-to-head matchup against Mr. Mastriano than against the other two leading candidates in the Republican primary, former Representative Lou Barletta and Bill McSwain, a former U.S. attorney.

The ad notes that Mr. Mastriano wants to “outlaw abortion” and is “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.” It continues: “He wants to end vote by mail, and he led the fight to audit the 2020 election. If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.”

It ends by asking: “Is that what we want in Pennsylvania?”

The ad went live in six media markets across the state on May 5, three days after the news emerged that the Supreme Court appeared ready to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Here’s why we have to take this race insanely seriously:

Much of the coverage of Mastriano’s surge — see here, here and here — doesn’t quite capture this underlying reality. Yes, those pieces tell us Mastriano played a key role in Trump’s 2020 theft effort. Some accounts note that as governor, Mastriano would appoint the next secretary of state, who would exert great control over the election process.

All of that is important. But it’s also insufficient. What must be conveyed clearly and unflinchingly is this: If Mastriano wins the general election, there is almost certainly no chance that a Democratic presidential candidate’s victory in Pennsylvania in 2024 will be certified by the state’s governor.

Consider Mastriano’s own words. During Trump’s 2020 effort to steal the election, Mastriano explicitly endorsed the idea that the state legislature has “sole authority” to reappoint new electors, given “mounting evidence” that Joe Biden’s win was “compromised.”

It wasn’t actually “compromised,” of course. But Mastriano continued to insist it was. He even pushed the Justice Department to accept this, at the moment when Trump wanted the department to announce fraud to create a pretext to overturn his loss. Mastriano is running for governor on the very idea that Trump’s loss was compromised.

This functionally means that Mastriano adheres to the notion that the mere claim of fraud is enough to justify the certification of presidential electors in defiance of the popular-vote outcome. As governor, he would be in a good position to help operationalize this very principle.

In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state certifies the election results, and the governor signs the certification of the winner’s electors. The state legislature exercised its constitutional role in determining the “manner” of appointing electors by passing a law creating this process.

If the Democratic contender wins the popular vote in Pennsylvania in 2024, and Gov. Mastriano declares widespread fraud, what’s to stop his handpicked secretary of state from certifying the GOP candidate as winner, after which he could sign certification of that candidate’s electors?

What’s to stop a House of Representatives controlled by Speaker Kevin McCarthy from counting those sham GOP electors?

“That is what is at stake,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for governor as a Democrat, told me. “He has made it clear he believes the 2020 election was rigged, and he would have put his own electors in place if he were governor.”

“This is not just about the ‘big lie,’” Shapiro said, noting that this formulation undersells the degree to which Mastriano poses a “danger to democracy.”