GOP warms to far-right gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Republicans are warming up to Doug Mastriano. Mastriano dismissed them as “has-beens.” Still, the party’s traditional donor community around the state is — by many accounts — sitting on their wallets at a time when Mastriano is badly lagging Shapiro in fundraising. No GOP contender for governor in the U.S. did more to subvert the 2020 presidential election than Mastriano — and no one may be better positioned to subvert the next one if he’s elected governor. That — plus Mastriano’s talk of decertifying voting machines, opposing gay marriage and ridiculing climate change as “fake science” — hasn’t escaped Shapiro, whose campaign is running a TV ad calling Mastriano “extreme, and way too risky for Pennsylvania.” Once a Mastriano primary victory appeared inevitable, Trump endorsed him, despite party leaders fearing that he couldn’t win over enough moderate voters to beat Shapiro in November. Ward said she told Mastriano that “he has my full support because I want a governor who isn’t going to kowtow to the Biden administration and the Democrats’ anti-fossil fuel policy on energy.” Mastriano is also getting help from an organization whose political action committees are a conduit for campaign cash from billionaire Jeffrey Yass and spent $13 million fruitlessly backing a primary rival to Mastriano while warning that Mastriano could not win swing voters in a general election.