In a Race Rife With Antisemitism Concerns, Mastriano Adviser Calls Shapiro ‘At Best a Secular Jew’

A senior adviser to Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, on Friday seemed to openly question the faith of Mr. Mastriano’s Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, in a contest that has been shaped more by concerns over antisemitism than perhaps any other major race in the country.

“Josh Shapiro is at best a secular Jew in the same way Joe Biden is a secular Catholic,” Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for the Trump campaign who worked to overturn the 2020 election, wrote on Twitter, commenting on a headline that noted Mr. Shapiro’s faith. Ms. Ellis branded the two Democrats as “extremists,” pointing to gender surgery for minors and distorting their positions on abortion rights.

“Doug Mastriano is for wholesome family values and freedom,” wrote Ms. Ellis, who is not Jewish.

Mr. Shapiro, 49, the state’s attorney general, is an observant Jew whose faith is a central part of his public identity. He keeps kosher, prioritizes Sabbath dinner with his family and is a Jewish day school alum.

“These attacks on Attorney General Shapiro and on all people of faith are another reminder of the stakes of this race,” said Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for the Shapiro campaign. “Our campaign is staying focused on bringing people together to defeat Mastriano’s dangerous extremism.”

Mr. Mastriano, a far-right Republican who promotes Christian power and disdains the separation of church and state, has alarmed a broad swath of Pennsylvania’s Jewish community with his rhetoric and his associations.

He has attacked Mr. Shapiro for attending and sending his children to a Jewish day school that Mr. Mastriano called a “privileged, exclusive, elite” school and said it evinced Mr. Shapiro’s “disdain for people like us,” remarks that seemed to be a dog whistle.

His campaign also paid $5,000 to the far-right social media platform Gab, on which the man accused of perpetrating the October 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting — believed to be the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history — had posted antisemitic screeds. In defending Mr. Mastriano and responding to backlash, the platform’s founder, Andrew Torba, deployed antisemitic language.

Mr. Mastriano, after a bipartisan outcry, released a statement saying that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.” But a late September campaign finance report showed that Mr. Mastriano had accepted a $500 donation from Mr. Torba in July. Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on Twitter that “the Mastriano campaign that repeatedly has employed anti-Jewish stereotypes and engaged with antisemites has no grounds to comment” on Mr. Shapiro’s level of observance.

The Mastriano campaign did not respond to questions about why it was important to question Mr. Shapiro’s faith or how he practices it, or what it means to be “at best” a secular Jew or Catholic. Efforts to seek comment from Ms. Ellis were not immediately successful, but on Twitter she rejected criticism of her remarks.

Mr. Biden often referenced his religion on the campaign trail, and he is a regular churchgoer who once memorably defended the Democratic Party as one of faith.

“The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious, I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat,” Mr. Biden said in 2005, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Mr. Biden supports abortion rights. But his views on the matter have evolved over his decades in public life and he has been open about his struggles to reconcile the teachings of his faith with the complexities of the abortion issue.

Separately, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia released a statement in response to a “false and hurtful statement” from Mr. Mastriano, without mentioning him by name.

Mr. Mastriano recently made false claims that the hospital “is grabbing homeless kids and kids in foster care, apparently, and experimenting on them with gender transitioning.”

The hospital, responding to a question about Mr. Mastriano’s remarks, said in the statement that “providing the best and most compassionate care to all children, inclusive of their gender identity, is central to the mission and values of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.” It added: “We stand in complete support of our colleagues and the patients and families they serve. We admire their strength and resilience during this ongoing period of difficulty.”