On a day when he was haunted by old remarks about abortion and dogged by fundraising woes, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano got a shot in the arm from Donald Trump Tuesday, as the former president joined him for teletown hall Tuesday night. Trump insisted that Mastriano could rein in crime and boost the state’s economy while praising Mastriano’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Nobody felt more strongly, or feels more strongly about election integrity than Doug,” said Trump during the 15-minute event. “Maybe me, I’m not sure.” He later falsely contended that the election was “rigged” and “we won Pennsylvania by a lot.”
Mastriano was among the loudest voices arguing that Joe Biden’s win in the state should be overturned, despite the fact that courts repeatedly rejected such efforts, and despite the absence of evidence of widespread fraud.
After Trump spoke, Mastriano himself pledged to fight for “free and fair” elections, “starting with voter ID and many other initiatives.” As governor, Mastriano would be in a position to appoint the state’s top election officer. He has already named a number of election deniers to his campaign effort, including former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis and his would-be transition team chair Frank Ryan, a state representative who promoted a completely discredited theory that more write-in ballots were sent in by voters than were printed.
Trump also blasted Mastriano’s Democratic rival, Josh Shapiro, as “a total lightweight” who as attorney general “has been weak on crime, letting vicious gangs and violent felons and dangerous criminal aliens run wild on your streets.” He falsely asserted that Shapiro “supports unrestricted abortion on demand right up until the moment of birth and even after birth,” though Shapiro himself has said he supports the current Pennsylvania abortion law. That law limits abortion at the 24th week except in cases where pregnancy poses a threat to a woman’s life or health.
Notably, that was the evening’s only mention of abortion, though earlier in the day news reports resurfaced a 2019 interview in which Mastriano said that both the person seeking an abortion and the doctor providing it should be charged with murder. During the Tuesday call, Mastriano raised another culture-war issue instead, saying he would oppose transgender athletes playing in women’s sports, and that there would be “no more games with pronouns.”
Trump has stood beside Mastriano before, having appeared at a rally with him in Wilkes-Barre earlier this month. The appearance Tuesday reprised many of the same themes, though one notable difference was that Trump’s remarks by phone were much shorter, and much less focused on himself, than his nearly two-hour-long rally in Wilkes-Barre.
And for Mastriano, the call was a key sign of support on a day when newly filed campaign finance reports showed him well behind Shapiro. Mastriano raised slightly less than $3.2 million since the May primary. Of that, $1 million came from an Illinois couple, Richard and Liz Uihlein , noted for funding far-right candidates and opposing LGBT rights.
By contrast, Shapiro reported raising more than $25 million this summer.
