Sen. Doug Mastriano wants Pennsylvania to return to its place of prominence in America as a driver of industry, innovation and energy, but he believes that vision is impossible with Democrat control of the state.
The Republican candidate for governor blasted his Democrat rival Attorney General Josh Shapiro during a 45-minute speech to more than 300 supporters last Wednesday (Aug. 24) at The Star Barn at Stone Gables Estate in Elizabethtown.
Mastriano said it’s time for Pennsylvania to reassert its role as “the leader of this great United States” and to once again live up to its nickname of The Keystone State.
“We are at a crossroad,” Mastriano said. “It is between tyranny and freedom.”
Attacking Shapiro and Wolf
Still on a political high from the previous week, the Franklin County senator talked about his appearance in Pittsburgh on Aug. 19 with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Turning Point Action rally. Mastriano said the energy in the room from “2,000 God-fearing patriots in the blue city of Pittsburgh” was palpable and energized his own campaign.
Mastriano said he spoke with DeSantis before the rally, telling him his goal is to make Pennsylvania “the Florida of the North.”
For most of the speech, Mastriano laid out his differences and grievances with Shapiro, calling him out for his close political links to current Gov. Tom Wolf.
Mastriano said Shapiro was recently asked by a Philadelphia news crew how he would be different from Wolf as governor, and he didn’t provide a clear answer. Mastriano was one of the most vocal legislative critics of Wolf during the COVID-19 pandemic, constantly challenging his edicts on business and restaurant closings and school mandates.
“We walked through the valley of the shadow of death in 2020 and 2021 when Wolf came in, swooped in and said, ‘Trump trampled upon our constitutional freedoms,’” Mastriano said. “No, they’re our God-given freedoms mentioned in the Constitution that we’re sworn to uphold.”
Mastriano highlighted rising crime rates in the state, saying “people are sick and tired of the extreme agenda” of Shapiro and Wolf regarding crime and punishment.
All crime has gone up 37% in Pennsylvania since Shapiro first took office as attorney general in 2017, Mastriano said, along with the murder rate accelerating dramatically in Philadelphia. Mastriano said there were around 277 yearly murders in Philadelphia when Shapiro first took power as the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the state, but 2021 saw the murder rate more than double to a record-setting 561 murders.
Mastriano said Shapiro was also weak on crimes committed in the summer of 2020 surrounding the George Floyd protests, saying he didn’t prosecute “any of his friends in antifa or BLM.”
“He’s been such a train wreck as the attorney general that he has to distract us and call us names,” Mastriano said. “It’s called projection in the psychological term, when you project on others your own problem. He is the extremist. Tom Wolf and the Democrat Party of today are the extremists.”
Mastriano said Shapiro’s “culture of hate” seeks to demonize parents coming out to express their opinions at school board meetings about the direction of education in school districts. He also criticized the coverage of local school boards by LNP/Lancaster Online, saying the “local rag mocks people for stepping up as good citizens because they happen to be Christian” and are elected to school boards.
Mastriano said Shapiro believes parents shouldn’t have a say in their children’s education and instead educational decisions should be left to the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state teacher’s union, who “should be calling the shots.”
The senator also took on Shapiro for his role in lawsuits filed by the state to keep in place mask mandates in schools.
According to recent press reports, Shapiro is distancing himself from COVID-19 policies enacted in Pennsylvania, saying, “This is an area where I think folks got it wrong,” regarding school and business shutdowns.
“Josh Shapiro sued to keep your kids masked up,” Mastriano said. “When you think about the suffering and pain and trauma on your kids and the child abuse, Josh Shapiro owns that. He sued you. Instead of doing his freaking job of prosecuting crime, he went after parental rights. He doesn’t care about your rights.”
Platform
As far as his own platform, Mastriano focused on energy policies, saying the state is “blessed with a goldmine underneath our feet here in Pennsylvania,” including oil and natural gas.
Mastriano said he would also seek to eliminate regulations enacted by Wolf, singling out Pennsylvania’s entrance into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a state compact seeking to limit carbon emissions from the energy and business sectors. Pennsylvania’s entrance into RGGI has been delayed in the courts after legislators challenged Wolf’s executive order placing the state into the compact.
Mastriano said he wants to focus on school choice, saying about 88% of Philadelphia residents want the opportunity to choose where their children go to school. He also said he wants to eliminate all vaccine requirements for jobs in Pennsylvania.
“I’m going to come in on day one hard and heavy, defending your freedoms and restoring common sense in Pennsylvania,” Mastriano said.
Mastriano’s wife, Rebecca, a regular sight at his rallies, talked about women’s rights in the campaign. She said the Shapiro campaign is painting her husband as an extremist against women’s rights because they “can’t run on their own failed policies.”
“We believe in a woman’s right to be born,” Rebecca said. “We believe in a woman’s right to have a stake in her child’s education. We believe in a woman’s right to access baby formula and affordable groceries for her family. We believe in a woman’s right to raise a child in a safe community where the government enforces the law and prosecutes crime.”
Mastriano said his decision to run for governor was not an easy one to make. He said he prayed over whether or not to run knowing he would face persecution by the political class and the media.
“Talking about these personal things, the media will mock us, just like they mocked William Penn,” Mastriano said. “That’s why he founded Pennsylvania – so you could live as free men and women and not live underneath the oppressive domination of people who think they’re so self-righteous that they can judge men and women’s religion.”
Staff writer Michael Yoder can be reached at michael@thelancasterpatriot.com. Follow @YoderReports on Twitter.
Staff writer Michael Yoder is an award-winning journalist who has been honored with several Keystone Press Awards for his investigative pieces.
Great job on this piece. I had to search high and low to find any credible reporting on Mastriano’s campaign, and I found it here.