Doug Mastriano is teasing another bid for governor in Pennsylvania. After his double-digit defeat last time, Democrats there are plotting to run against him regardless of whether he gets into the race.
The will-he-won’t-he intrigue around Mastriano, who lost to Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro in the 2022 contest by 15 points, has intensified recently. Last week, he published a refreshed version of his Doug4Gov.com campaign website and hit back on a Politico report detailing concerns President Donald Trump’s political team felt about him entering the contest.
And in an interview with conservative commentator John Fredericks, he implored state party leaders not to put a thumb on the scale for state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who is widely expected to launch her own gubernatorial campaign. Mastriano has also promoted polling that shows he would enter a race up big on Garrity.
“Neither Trump, nor anyone in the White House has expressed any concerns to me,” Mastriano told NBC News in a direct message on X. “Rather, Trump is very loyal, and he remembers that I was one of the only ones in Pennsylvania to stand with him since the 2020 election.”
Mastriano’s moves come against the backdrop of a race with far more layers than a standard re-election for an incumbent governor. Pennsylvania and its numerous battleground districts could determine control of the U.S. House next year. Democrats are pushing to flip the state Senate and gain full control of the state legislature for the first time in decades.
And then there is the possibility of a Shapiro 2028 presidential campaign, one that he could boost with another large win and strong coattails in the nation’s biggest swing state — and one that Republicans hope they can defuse or derail with a robust campaign against him for governor next year.
“Obviously people want to beat Josh Shapiro,” said a Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker, who like others spoke under condition of anonymity to describe the inner workings of the race, adding that the party has failed to truly challenge Shapiro in any of his statewide runs, whether for governor or attorney general. “Whoever thinks they’re running for president in 2028, they’re looking at this race too and saying, ‘Here’s a talented, retail-elected official who clearly has national ambitions, and we can’t just let him walk into the governor’s mansion.’”
Yet finding an opponent for a governor with an undefeated statewide record and high approval ratings hasn’t been straightforward. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., who had a pre-endorsement from Trump, opted against entering the contest last month.
The Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker detailed three tiered goals for Republicans in the race: field a candidate who can keep the contest close “so that we don’t get killed downballot,” find someone who can make the race winnable, and, “at the very least, we need somebody that’s going to run an aggressive campaign so that he’s not untouched going into 2028.”
“If an aggressive Republican goes after him, what’s going to happen is he’s going to have to come out and sound more moderate than he wants to be,” this person said. “And the more he does that, the less likely it is he can get through a Democrat primary.”
‘Full gas’
Republicans pinned Shapiro’s landslide victory in 2022 on Mastriano and his brand of far-right politics. The same summer that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats assailed Mastriano for saying he saw no room for exceptions to an abortion ban. And Mastriano, whose fundraising paled in comparison to Shapiro’s, was unable to launch much of a counterattack.
While state Republicans have started to coalesce around Garrity, eager to avoid a messy primary before facing Shapiro, Democrats are still focused on Mastriano as they launch initial attacks against her.
Pennsylvania Democrats told NBC News to expect the anti-Garrity campaign to feature plenty of examples of where she and Mastriano align — particularly on supporting abortion restrictions and on the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Garrity spoke at a rally in Harrisburg intended to encourage lawmakers to decertify the 2020 vote one day prior to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, though her 2024 campaign said she accepted the results of that election.
“I can guarantee that’s what it’s going to be,” a Pennsylvania Democratic campaign operative said of whether the anti-Garrity campaign would focus on alignment between Mastriano and the treasurer.
But just two years after Shapiro’s victory, Trump won Pennsylvania and Republicans managed to flip control of two battleground House seats as well as the state attorney general’s office. Democratic messaging on abortion and efforts to overturn the 2020 election did not break through as they had in the 2022 midterms.
Garrity, who said in a statement that she will “have an announcement about the future of my career in service very soon,” has won two statewide campaigns for treasurer, including last fall.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, a Republican, said the key for her party is to unify and re-energize last fall’s Trump coalition. She previewed a line of attack on Shapiro — that he “rides the fence on every issue so hard” — saying the governor has taken an array of different positions on issues like school choice and energy.
“I’m not sure who all is going to be coming out,” Bartolotta said of the Republican field for next year’s race. “But we absolutely have to have someone who not only can win a primary but can win a general election. We can’t have extremists. We can’t have people who solely focus on far-right issues and initiatives that they’re completely unviable in a general election.”
“We’re not a red state,” she added. “We’re just not. As much as the Republicans would love to have that, and we’re closer all the time, we’re not there yet. You have to have a candidate who’s viable in a general election.”
As Republicans figure out their internal dynamics, Garrity is already taking hits. Democrats have already tried to tie her to Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” even wrongly saying she had voted for it. And two unions that endorsed Garrity last fall already came out to say they will not support her again as she lines up for a run against Shapiro.
“That stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” a second Pennsylvania Democratic campaign operative said. “Unions don’t put out strong political messages without asking. So it’s kind of game on now.”
Shapiro enters the contest with an approval rating north of 60%, with only about a quarter of Pennsylvania voters disapproving of him, according to a Morning Consult poll of registered voters taken between April and June. And his campaign closed 2024 with more than $11 million in cash on hand.
The second Pennsylvania Democratic campaign operative said the clearest sign yet of Shapiro’s strength in the race was Meuser’s decision not to mount a challenge, even as he looked to be preparing a run.
“Josh Shapiro is going to have a lot of money on his hands,” this person said. “The campaign team’s going to take a little test run of some 2028 material. They’re going to take a test run of 2028 methods. They’re going to go full gas.”
Shapiro has downplayed any focus on the race, and his spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
“Here’s what I know to be true: The Republicans will nominate someone to run against me for governor,” Shapiro said late last month when asked about the Republican primary dynamics during a visit to Lewistown to promote economic development. “Let them play that out, they’ll deal with their politics on their side. I’m going to continue doing my job governing for all Pennsylvanians — Democrats, Republicans, independents — and we’re going to keep getting stuff done.”
Shapiro could not only burnish his political credentials with another big win but help sweep in Democratic control of the legislature, which has been divided for Shapiro’s term and would give him the opportunity to advance big-ticket legislation in 2027. Republicans and Democrats suggested that raising the minimum wage, increasing education funding, codifying abortion rights and legalizing marijuana are likely to be among his bigger pursuits in that scenario.
“The Republicans have controlled the Pennsylvania state Senate” for decades, said J.J. Abbott, a Democratic strategist who worked for former Gov. Tom Wolf. “The number of things that are popular, populist, pretty commonsense, low-hanging fruit to do is quite immense.”
Still, Abbott said that running a re-election campaign is not ideal for a potential presidential contender.
“If you were trying to design an ideal scenario, I’m not sure that you would want an intense campaign right before you run,” he said. “Someone who’s not running a campaign could go to all the swing states, they could be out raising money all the time, instead of having to pay very close attention to an election right in front of you.”
But the second Pennsylvania Democratic campaign operative said it could be a great warm-up act before 2028, giving Shapiro a chance to deal with and work through lines of attack against him.
“If I’m a Republican operative, I want to try to loosen up Josh Shapiro,” this person said. “I would want to try to build a couple of negative narratives around him, because he’s a front-runner for 2028. I want to kind of punch back on a couple things that have happened over the last few years.”
“If you give him free rein in 2027, oh my,” this person continued. “He’s gonna be marching into 2028 as the guy who is the king.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Comments