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Here's how the governor race in Pennsylvania shapes up with Josh Shapiro vs. Doug Mastriano

Matthew Rink
Erie Times-News

Attorney General Josh Shapiro was crowned the presumptive Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor when he made his long-awaited announcement on an October morning in Pittsburgh.

Shapiro's uncontested primary allowed him to crisscross the state for months to talk about what separated him from any of the nine candidates running for governor on the GOP side. It also enabled him to build a campaign war chest of $16 million as a fractured Republican field fought for donors, voters and coveted endorsements.

Before GOP voters even stepped foot inside their polling precincts, Shapiro ran an ad zeroing in on the one Republican who surged in the polls in the final days of the primary and who would go on to capture the nomination Tuesday: state Sen. Doug Mastriano.

The rise of Mastriano, an ultra conservative who has pushed unfounded conspiracies about the 2020 presidential election and who marched at the Capitol on Jan. 6, prompted establishment Republican leaders in the state to launch an 11th hour plan to thwart his candidacy in fear he'd face electability issues in a general election contest against the Montgomery County Democrat. But those efforts seemingly backfired days later when Mastriano picked up the late endorsement from former President Donald Trump, which would all but assure his landslide primary victory with more than 44% of the vote.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, the Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, gestures to the cheering crowd during his primary night election party in Chambersburg, Pa., Tuesday, May 17, 2022.

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"If Mastriano is nominated, that would be a gift to Josh Shapiro," J. Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, tweeted a few hours before the polls closed Tuesday. "It (race prediction) would go to 'leans Democrat' from 'toss-up.'"

"Shapiro's advertising has been basically a campaign commercial for Mastriano, who has come out and said, 'yeah, I believe all those things. That's who I am,'" said Joe Morris, director of the Mercyhurst Center for Applied Politics at Mercyhurst University, in Erie. "Shapiro wanted to compete against, more than any other Republican, Mastriano. He wants more than anything else for this to be a contest about whether the 2020 election was a legitimate election and whether or not the events of Jan. 6 were justified. If he frames the debate in that way, then he probably wins the election."

A referendum on Trump, Wolf

Pennsylvania "experimented" with Trump and Trumpism in 2016 only to reject it four years later. Morris said the midterm election this year and the 2024 presidential election will serve as a referendum on whether Trump's populist ideology can survive as an alternative to liberalism.

But the election will also serve as a referendum on outgoing Gov. Tom Wolf and President Joe Biden.

Voters upset by Wolf's COVID-19 shutdown orders and mask mandates could blame his party's nominee, Shapiro. Mastriano not only connected with conservative voters on election fraud claims trumpeted by the former president, but also as a vocal critic of Wolf's handling of the pandemic.

Somerset County Democratic Party Chairwoman Shelley Glessner, left, speaks with Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, right, and state Rep. Austin Davis May 13 during a campaign stop at My Girls Deli in Somerset Borough.

"There's a lot of baggage there," Morris said. "And those issues like baby formula (shortages), gas prices, jobs, all of those bread and butter issues that people make decisions on, any problems with those issues are going to be pinned squarely on the Democratic Party. And the thing that Shapiro has to be worried about is, will there develop a time-for-change mood among Pennsylvanians that will usher in a Republican governor."

Mastriano's military record ― he's a retired U.S. Army colonel ― and education appealed to Republican primary voters Bill and Juanita Swan of North East, a rural, grape-farming community in Erie County that's home to a Welch's plant.

"He's the four master's degree guy, right?" Bill Swan, 55, said to his wife after casting their ballots at the local library.

The couple felt Mastriano's positions on key issues, such as requiring voters to show ID at the polls, made him the candidate who most closely aligned with them politically.

And Trump's endorsement?

"Yes, that helped," said Bill Swan, who works as the operator of the borough's water department.

As for Shapiro, Juanita Swan said she didn't know much about the Democrat.

"The only good thing I know about him was that he brokered the AHN-UPMC deal," said Juanita Swan, a nurse at St. Vincent Medical Center in Erie, which is an Allegheny Health Network facility.

Not all Republicans at the Swans' voting precinct were keen on Mastriano. Amber Belson, a member of the borough council, said she initially backed the state senator until reading more about the candidate. She voted for former U.S. Attorney William McSwain.

"I don't believe in nasty politics, but I did hear a couple of bad things about a couple of the other people running," including Mastriano, said Belson, 37, who declined to say specifically what drove her away from Mastriano.

However, Belson said she'd support Mastriano if he became the party's nominee.

"My husband and I travel all over," she said. "We were in Harrisburg, Hershey all the way down, through and all the way around the state. Mastriano is everywhere. I have seen the most of his signs than anybody's everywhere."

The road to victory won't be a cakewalk for Shapiro or Mastriano.

G. Terry Madonna

Longtime Pennsylvania political analyst G. Terry Madonna noted that Democrats have to contend with the "midterm curse." In 17 of the 19 midterm elections since World War II, the party that has held the presidency has lost seats in Congress.

"The establishment Republicans have already made it clear what they think about (Mastriano), that he can't win because he's too far to the right," Madonna said. "In a sense, each of the parties has a problem to contend with. The Democrats are united behind (U.S. Senate nominee and lieutenant governor John) Fetterman and they're united behind... Shapiro. So, each of them (Mastriano and Shapiro) has a challenge that they need to deal with and obviously we have to see how it all plays out."

'They could not be further apart'

Morris said that he's never seen two gubernatorial nominees so different in his two decades following Pennsylvania politics.

Shapiro favors expanding access to the ballot; Mastriano has made a significant push to restrict elections, including proposing to get rid of mail-in ballots and suggesting he would have appointed a secretary of state who would have refused to certify the results of the 2020 election had he been governor.

Shapiro supports abortion rights; Mastriano would ban abortion and make no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Abortion will play a significant factor in the governor's race if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

Shapiro has fought for tighter background checks for gun purchases and has urged the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to close a loophole on so-called "ghost guns"; Mastriano has proposed a bill that would forbid state and local government officials from enforcing new federal gun restriction laws, regulations, and executive orders enacted after 2020.

"They could not be further apart in terms of where they stand on issues," Morris said.

Morris and Robert Speel, a political science professor at Penn State Behrend in Erie, said the mood of the country come November will largely shape the race.

"It's totally dependent on national trends in November and what the national mood is," Speel said. "If Republicans are winning everywhere because voters are upset about inflation, that could put a Republican in Pennsylvania over the top, too, in both the governor and Senate race. If the national mood is more even, Josh Shapiro has to be considered the strong favorite in Pennsylvania."

Chris Ullery of the Bucks County Courier Times contributed to this report.

Contact Matthew Rink at mrink@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ETNrink.