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GOP fears Mastriano’s down-ballot drag in Pennsylvania

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President Donald Trump’s team is worried it has a Doug Mastriano problem on its hands.

Trump’s advisers privately fear the far-right firebrand could cost Republicans the elusive Pennsylvania governor’s seat and, were he to win the nomination, drag down the GOP ticket in the midterms next year, four Republicans familiar with their thinking said. Each was granted anonymity to speak frankly as they monitor the battleground race and consider their next moves.

Republicans blame Mastriano for costing the party a Senate contest, multiple House seats and a state legislative chamber in 2022 when he lost by 15 points in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race. Now he’s teasing a comeback bid against Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. With as many as four GOP-held House seats in play in the state, Republicans believe Mastriano’s name atop the ballot would threaten their chances of keeping their slim majority in the lower chamber.

A person close to Trump’s political operation — one of the four aforementioned Republicans — described the president’s team as “very concerned” that a Mastriano campaign “could jeopardize or add to the jeopardization of multiple down-ballot congressional races.”

Pennsylvania Republicans went even further, saying a Mastriano candidacy would all but certainly unleash a bloodbath across the state next November.

“If he’s our nominee, we lose four House seats,” Pennsylvania-based GOP consultant Josh Novotney said. “He’s a nightmare that no one wants.”

Asked for comment, Mastriano said POLITICO is “not letting facts getting [sic] in the way of a good story.”

“I can tell you that I have President Trump’s direct line,” he said in a direct message on X. “And he ain’t saying this.”

Despite perennially alarming Republican leaders, Mastriano, a state senator, still appears to have a grip on MAGA voters. A private Public Policy Polling survey conducted in May and obtained by POLITICO shows him leading state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a likely candidate favored by much of the party establishment, by 21 points.

His perceived strength is springing national and Pennsylvania Republicans into action.

Some state GOP operatives said they hope Trump will back Garrity in a bid to block Mastriano. For now his plans for Pennsylvania’s nascent gubernatorial primary are unclear, particularly since Shapiro is widely seen as the favorite in the general election. Even if Garrity wins the nomination, several state and national Republicans expressed pessimism that anyone can defeat the incumbent, though they believe Garrity would outperform Mastriano.

But Trump is intently focused on maintaining GOP control of Congress and has gone to great lengths to steer candidates in next year’s House and Senate races, in order to prevent messy primaries and rally the party behind strong contenders. He has directed some candidates to run for reelection and others to stay out of races, while pushing Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps in the hunt for more GOP-friendly seats.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not reply to a request for comment.

A Pennsylvania Republican strategist familiar with the White House’s thinking said the Trump team’s view on Garrity is “look, maybe she doesn’t win, but she’s going to run a really solid race and it’ll help us down-ballot — we can’t get blown out at the top of the ticket and Stacy is a good campaigner.”

Pennsylvania GOP leaders are also quietly making plans to quickly unite around Garrity when she launches her campaign in the coming weeks, in an effort to learn from their devastating losses in 2022, said multiple Republicans. 

Mastriano built a devoted following over the years by leading the charge in Pennsylvania to overturn the 2020 election results and unapologetically opposing abortion with no exceptions. He has also cultivated his fan base on social media, including through Facebook livestreams.

But Mastriano’s hardline political brand, underscored by his appearance at the capitol on the day of the Jan. 6 attack, has turned off swing voters and independents.

“He is a nice guy, veteran, great for his district,” said David Urban, a former senior Trump adviser who helped lead the president’s 2016 campaign in Pennsylvania. “He just doesn’t have statewide appeal and that will be a big problem for the down-ballot races across the state.”

In a recent talk radio interview, Mastriano said he’s “in effect” launched an exploratory committee for next year’s gubernatorial race, adding, “we have our team in all 67 counties still standing by.” He did not respond to a request for an interview.

Trump offered his support to Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) when he was weighing a run for governor that he opted against this month. In the Public Policy Polling survey, which quizzed 433 likely Republican primary voters, Garrity received 18 percent and Meuser came in third place with 6 percent.

Trump endorsed Mastriano in the 2022 primary, but came to regret that decision. Mastriano raised little money and aired virtually no television ads, an unheard-of approach by a major-party nominee in a top swing state.

Trump privately worried that Mastriano might jump into the race for Senate in 2024 and hurt his own presidential campaign; Mastriano declined to run and instead endorsed the party-backed Dave McCormick, who courted Mastriano’s support early and went on to defeat then-incumbent Sen. Bob Casey that fall.

Pennsylvania Republicans are now looking to recreate their success in the 2024 election, which they partly attribute to the state party backing its preferred primary candidates after declining to endorse anyone in the 2022 gubernatorial nominating contest. The state GOP hopes to back a challenger to Shapiro in September, and several Republicans said they expect Garrity will be the pick. Scott Martin, a GOP state senator, did not rule out a run when speaking with a reporter earlier this year.

Garrity supporters are projecting confidence she’d defeat Mastriano given her close ties to the conservative grassroots movement and biography as a veteran and business leader. Some also expressed doubt that Mastriano would ultimately launch a gubernatorial bid.

“Republican primary voters are very much going to want to beat Shapiro,” GOP strategist and Garrity adviser John Brabender said. “People are smart, they want to win, they want to beat this governor, and it’s going to be clear to them they have a candidate of substance. And I think there will be an incredible unifying around Stacy.”

Mastriano has signaled he is bracing for the GOP establishment to line up behind another Republican to stop him.

In the News Talk 103.7 FM interview this week, he said the state GOP may be eager to “clear the field” in the gubernatorial primary. But, he warned, “they’re not going to clear the field of me.” He said that “we played the game over the past couple years” — an apparent reference to backing McCormick for Senate instead of running himself — and “now we want something out of it, and that will probably be, perhaps, my candidacy.”

In an echo of the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats meddled in GOP primaries across the country in order to pad their chances in the general election, some on the left are openly encouraging Mastriano to jump into the gubernatorial race.

“Mastriano was literally the single worst Republican candidate for governor in the nation in 2022,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) in a text. “So I’m very much hoping he runs again!”



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