PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting… Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, spent the last week acting as a GOP emissary with a message of party unity. That’s an awkward fit for the state senator from Franklin County, known just as much for his broadsides at fellow Republicans as his salvos at Democrats. Mastriano, in a Monday interview with the conservative John Fredericks Radio Show, was asked about the pre-primary Republican establishment move to cast him as “too conservative, too extreme.” Would the Republican National Committee and the Republican Governors Association now embrace and help fund his campaign?
“I don’t know,” Mastriano said. “I’ve had conversations with both those groups. I’m confident we’ll get support from both.” RNC spokesperson Rachel Lee told Clout the party is eager to use a “data-driven ground game” to “deliver victory for Republicans up and down the ballot this November.” She didn’t mention Mastriano by name. RGA spokesperson Chris Gustafson used Clout’s question about Mastriano to link the Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, to President Joe Biden’s national economic woes. He also didn’t mention Mastriano by name, saying the RGA “will continue to closely monitor the race.”
Mastriano’s confidence about party unity is born from a recent poll, showing Shapiro with a narrow lead, but still within the margin of error. “So this actually sent shock waves across the establishment,” Mastriano said Monday. “Because many of them in the elite, leading class, they kind of wrote me off.” That was Mastriano reverting to his primary style of knocking his own party. His message is less kumbaya, more come-to-Doug. Mastriano has a strong motivation for mending his party — money. Shapiro had nearly $13.5 million in the bank as of June 6, according to campaign finance reports filed last week, while Mastriano had just more than $397,000.
Speaking Wednesday to News Talk 103.7-FM, a conservative station in his home county, Mastriano noted that he had just won a primary crowded with candidates who vastly outspent him. Shapiro was unopposed in his primary. Again, Mastriano pushed the poll.
