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      Doug Mastriano Gets Pennsylvania Republicans to Close Ranks Behind Him

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      STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Before Pennsylvania’s primary, much of the state’s Republican establishment agreed that Doug Mastriano would be a disaster as the nominee for governor.Andy Reilly, the state’s Republican national committeeman, had joined a stop-Mastriano effort by rival candidates, who feared that the far-right state senator and prolific spreader of election conspiracy theories would squander an otherwise winnable race.Yet on a warm evening last month, Mr. Reilly opened his suburban Philadelphia home for a backyard fund-raiser for Mr. Mastriano, who won his primary in May. Guests chipped in $150 for ribs and pulled pork and listened to Mr. Mastriano, fresh from an uproar over his presence on Gab, a social media site that is a haven for hate speech.Mr. Reilly later defended Mr. Mastriano as the better choice to lead Pennsylvania over his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro. “The question is can Doug Mastriano keep the Republican Party base and all the factions together?” Mr. Reilly said.In one of the most closely watched governor’s races of the year, Pennsylvania Republican officials who had warned that Mr. Mastriano was unelectable have largely closed ranks behind him, after he proved to be the overwhelming choice of base Republicans. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plans to headline a rally with Mr. Mastriano in Pittsburgh, a bearhug from one of the party’s most popular national figures.Mr. Shapiro, the state attorney general, has used a huge fund-raising advantage to batter Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist on abortion and on the 2020 election, opening a double-digit lead in polls. Still, Democrats remain anxious they could lose to Mr. Mastriano because of the free-floating anger of the electorate this year, with most voters worried primarily about the economy.Josh Shapiro, with supporters in Lock Haven, Pa., has battered Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesWhether the recent run of Democratic successes nationally — including the climate and drug-pricing legislative package and the resounding defeat of an anti-abortion measure in Kansas — can shift the fundamental midterm equation remains unclear.“The environment that Joe Biden has created for Josh Shapiro makes this year probably the only year that a Mastriano-type candidate could win in a purple state like Pennsylvania,” said Matt Brouillette, the head of a conservative political group in the state that opposed Mr. Mastriano in the primary. “While the Democrats want to focus on Jan. 6 and Roe v. Wade, the electorate is focused on putting food on their table and filling up the tanks in their cars.”The Democratic anxiety was on display recently at a party picnic in liberal State College, the home of Pennsylvania State University. At Mr. Shapiro’s mention of Mr. Mastriano during a speech, a woman shouted, “You better win!”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.There was nervous laughter. The worry reflects the alarm of Democrats that if Mr. Mastriano, 58, becomes governor, he would sign severe abortion restrictions and would have the power to subvert the 2024 presidential election in the swing state in favor of the G.O.P. nominee.A Shapiro campaign event in State College. Democrats in Pennsylvania are worried about Mr. Mastriano’s positions on abortion and voting.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times“I hear it every single day,” Mr. Shapiro told the crowd. “They’re worried about their rights being ripped away from them.”Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army officer who led Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Pennsylvania, marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, passing police barricades breached by other marchers. He has boasted that as governor, “I get to decertify any or all machines in the state.” He has called for compelling all nine million registered voters in the state to re-register, which experts say would violate federal law.“These are dangerous, extreme positions he’s taken, and these are things I know the people of Pennsylvania reject,” Mr. Shapiro, 49, said in an interview.Mr. Shapiro compared the unusually high turnout in deep-red Kansas in favor of abortion rights to how the issue is motivating his own supporters. “We have seen incredible intensity in our campaign post-Dobbs,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court decision leaving it to states to protect or deny abortion access.Many women who attended his events agreed, saying that abortion is their most important issue. “I was the generation that was young when Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land, and I’ve known women whose health was ruined because of an illegal abortion,” said Bonnie Hannis, 80, who came to hear Mr. Shapiro in rural Clinton County.“I’m excited to defend my reproductive rights,” said Gianna Renzo, 19, who grew up in the county and is now a student at Princeton. “I see women my age who are typically from Republican families, and they’re going to come over to the Democratic side” because of abortion.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the State Legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately, saying lawmakers will write whatever bill they choose and “my personal views are irrelevant.”But there are few signs that he has broadened his appeal to independent and swing voters, especially in the suburbs, who have played a pivotal role in recent Pennsylvania elections. He was supported by 82 percent of Republicans in a Fox News poll in late July, but independents preferred Mr. Shapiro by 28 points.It remains to be seen if Mr. Mastriano can broaden his appeal to independent and swing voters.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesMr. Mastriano declined to comment for this article.He has routinely snubbed the state’s TV news outlets and newspapers that might help him reach a broader audience. It is a purposeful strategy aimed at exciting conservatives who believe that Democrats have “the media in their pockets,” as he recently put it.This week, he said he would not participate in traditional debates run by independent news organizations because of what he called their “hidden partisan agenda.” He proposed debates in which each candidate names a moderator — a nonstarter for the Shapiro campaign, which called the idea an “obvious stunt.”Mr. Mastriano speaks almost exclusively to far-right podcasters like Stephen K. Bannon, conservative talk radio hosts and Fox News. On a recent swing through northwest Pennsylvania, he brushed off a Pittsburgh TV station that sought to interview him, and even the small-circulation Meadville Tribune.One result of that approach is that he seldom has to field tough questions. And his poor fund-raising — he ended the primary season with just $400,000 in his campaign account, compared with $13.4 million for Mr. Shapiro — has left him unable to run TV ads all summer to counter a barrage of attacks from his opponent.The Shapiro ads use Mr. Mastriano’s words to paint him as outside the mainstream, not just on abortion and election denial, but on gay marriage, which he has said should “absolutely not” be legal, and on global warming, which he called “fake science.”“You’ve basically got a one-person governor’s race right now in terms of voter contact,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in the state. “All the folks who listen to those far-right podcasts, I think he maxed out his vote potential. He has to move past his base.”At a recent appearance by Mr. Mastriano at the York County Fair, there were no signs on the sprawling fairgrounds directing potential voters his way. Outside the hall where he was to appear, a large crowd on bleachers at the appointed hour turned out to be waiting for the Hot Dog Pig Races.Mr. Mastriano showed up inside at the county Republican booth. He did not give a speech, but shook hands and posed for pictures with several dozen supporters.Donna VanDyne, an insurance agent, supported a no-exceptions abortion ban, claiming that victims of rape or incest who give birth adjust. “When they have their baby, they have each other and become support systems for one another,” she said.Dawn Smith, an aspiring teacher’s aide, repeated a debunked conspiracy theory Mr. Mastriano had spread about voting machines. “They switched President Trump’s votes to Joe Biden’s votes with the Dominion machines,” she claimed.Wayne Liek, a retired truck driver, recalling prayers he said in school in the 1960s, agreed with Mr. Mastriano that the Constitutional separation of church and state was, as Mr. Mastriano described it, “a myth.”A core of Mr. Mastriano’s popularity with Republicans is his embrace of views associated with Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and often intertwined with far-right conspiratorial thinking.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesFew attendees seemed aware of the furor over Mr. Mastriano’s presence on Gab. His campaign had paid $5,000 to broaden his support with users of the social media site, which is known as a haven for white nationalists. A post by Mr. Mastriano in July criticizing Democratic policies drew dozens of replies that were antisemitic insults of Mr. Shapiro.Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba, defended Mr. Mastriano in videos laced with antisemitic vitriol. Mr. Mastriano distanced himself from Mr. Torba on July 28, saying that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.’’At a later appearance where he did give a speech, in Cochranton, Mr. Mastriano said: “It’s funny, they want to call us extremists. They’re the extremists.’’He attacked Mr. Shapiro for suing, as attorney general, to keep a mask mandate in schools and to uphold Gov. Tom Wolf’s shutdown of nonessential businesses early in the pandemic. Mr. Mastriano first gained a following for leading protests against restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid. Fury at those orders lingers for many conservatives.Asked about the suits, Mr. Shapiro said that he personally opposes mandates for masks and vaccines, but as the state’s top lawyer he was required to represent the governor and executive branch in litigation. He prevailed in both cases.Before he campaigned in State College, a blue island in a sea of red in central Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro had visited Lock Haven in nearby Clinton County.Mike Hanna Sr., a retired Democratic state lawmaker from the area, said Mr. Mastriano “has a strong base here, just like Trump.” But Mr. Hanna said the former president had lost support since inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol.“I hunt with a bunch of veterans, and they just shake their heads,” Mr. Hanna said. “Trump has done a lot to erode his standing with his base, and Mastriano’s participation in all that, and the extreme positions he’s taken, have done the same thing.”“It’d be a lot scarier for us,” Mr. Hanna said, “if the Republicans had selected a moderate.” More

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      Senate G.O.P. Campaign Arm Slashes TV Ad Buys in Three States

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      The Republicans’ Senate campaign committee has slashed its television ad reservations in three critical battleground states for the fall, a likely sign of financial troubles headed into the peak of the 2022 midterm election season.The National Republican Senatorial Committee has cut more than $5 million in Pennsylvania, including its reservations in the Philadelphia media market, according to two media-tracking sources.Reservations in Wisconsin, in the Madison and Green Bay markets, have also been curtailed, by more than $2 million. And in Arizona, all reservations after Sept. 30 have been cut in Phoenix and Tucson, the state’s only two major media markets, amounting to roughly $2 million more.So far around $10 million had been canceled as of midday Monday, though more changes to the fall reservations were in progress. The states where ad reservations have been canceled are home to three of the nation’s most competitive Senate contests.In a statement, Chris Hartline, the communications director for the N.R.S.C., said, “Nothing has changed about our commitment to winning in all of our target states.”Mr. Hartline added that the committee had “been spending earlier than ever before to help our candidates get their message out and define the Democrats for their radical agenda. We’ve been creative in how we’re spending our money and will continue to make sure that every dollar spent by the N.R.S.C. is done in the most efficient and effective way possible.”After this article was published online, Mr. Hartline called it “false” on Twitter and said that “there is money being moved from the I.E. side” — independent expenditures that cannot be coordinated with campaigns — “back to the N.R.S.C. side of the wall.”He declined to say how much was being rebooked.In Wisconsin, some ads were being reserved in Milwaukee, for instance, though significantly less than what had been canceled in Madison and Green Bay, as of Monday afternoon.In Pennsylvania, the Senate Republican super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, recently announced it was adding $9.5 million to its fall reservation in the closely watched race between Mehmet Oz, the Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrat. The super PAC moved up the beginning of its ad buy by three weeks, to Aug. 19, a decision that may have eased pressure on the party committee to keep its reservation.As online fund-raising has slowed for Republicans in recent months, affecting both candidates and party committees, the party is increasingly dependent on major super PACs in the battle for the Senate. Entering July, the Senate Republican super PAC had nearly $40 million more cash on hand than the Democratic Senate super PAC.The Senate party committee said it had already helped fund $17 million in “coordinated” and “hybrid” ads with Republican senators and Senate candidates in Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin, according to the committee, and had spent $36 million on television overall.The N.R.S.C. entered July with $28.5 million in the bank and has millions of dollars reserved in other battleground states.A person familiar with the committee’s planning said some of the money saved by canceling reservations now would eventually be used to rebook advertising time in coordination with the Senate campaigns, which would help stretch the group’s dollars further because candidates are entitled to lower ad prices. Some of the new reservations were already being made on Monday. More

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      Fetterman Plans His Return to Campaign Trail in Pennsylvania Senate Race

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      Three months after John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee, was sidelined by a stroke, he is planning to return to the campaign trail with a rally next Friday.Mr. Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, announced on Friday that he will hold the rally in Erie, Pa., his team said. He is facing Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor and Republican nominee, in one of the nation’s marquee Senate battles.Pennsylvania may offer the Democrats their best chance at picking up a U.S. Senate seat, and Mr. Fetterman’s general election debut, on the cusp of the intense fall campaign season, will be closely watched. For weeks after the stroke in May, he remained largely out of the public eye, releasing brief video clips as he recovered. In June, his campaign acknowledged that he also had a heart condition called cardiomyopathy. Mr. Fetterman said that he had “almost died,” and he promised to focus on his recovery.He has slowly begun to emerge, greeting volunteers in July and attending some in-person fund-raisers, while Dr. Oz has criticized him for his absence from the trail. Some who have listened to Mr. Fetterman at fund-raising events in recent weeks have said that he appears energetic but that it was sometimes evident that he was grasping for a word — something Mr. Fetterman has acknowledged.“I might miss a word every now and then in a conversation, or I might slur two words,” Mr. Fetterman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month. “Even then, I think that’s infrequent.” He added, “I feel like we are ready to run.”While Mr. Fetterman himself has had a light in-person campaign schedule, he and his team have maintained a relentless pace on social media, pursuing a range of creative tactics to cast Dr. Oz as more at home in New Jersey — which had been his longtime principal residence — than in Pennsylvania, where he says he now lives, in a Philadelphia suburb.Mr. Fetterman’s campaign tapped Nicole Polizzi of “Jersey Shore” fame — better known as Snooki — to record a video for Dr. Oz declaring that “Jersey will not forget you.” And Stevie Van Zandt, a renowned musician and actor who has reached legend status in his home state, recorded a direct-to-camera message to Dr. Oz urging him to “come on back to Jersey where you belong. And we’ll have some fun, eh?” For his part, Dr. Oz, a heart surgeon, has unveiled a site that criticizes Mr. Fetterman as a “basement bum” over his absence from the campaign trail. He has also sought to link Mr. Fetterman to President Biden, who has struggled with anemic approval ratings, and to Senator Bernie Sanders, whom Mr. Fetterman backed in the 2016 presidential primary.Public polling shows Mr. Fetterman with a sizable lead over Dr. Oz. But Pennsylvania is perhaps the ultimate swing state, and the race may tighten significantly before Election Day. On Friday, Mr. Fetterman’s campaign announced that it surpassed one million individual contributions since he announced his candidacy last year.“Whoever wins Erie County will win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement announcing his plans for a rally. “Erie County is Pennsylvania’s most important bellwether county.” More

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      Is It All About ‘Fealty to Trump’s Delusions’? Three Writers Talk About Where the G.O.P. Is Headed

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      Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Rachel Bovard, the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Tim Miller, the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell,” about the recent primaries in Arizona, Michigan and beyond, and the strength of Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party.Ross Douthat: Rachel, Tim, thanks so much for joining me. I’m going to start where we always tend to start in these discussions — with the former president of the United States and his influence over the Republican Party. Donald Trump has had some bad primary nights this year, most notably in May in Georgia.But overall Tuesday seems like it was a good one for him: In Michigan, his favored candidate narrowly beat Peter Meijer, one of the House Republican votes for impeachment. In the Arizona Republican primary for governor, Kari Lake is narrowly ahead, which would give Trump a big victory in his battle of endorsements against Mike Pence, who endorsed Lake’s main rival.Do you agree, or is Trump’s influence just the wrong lens through which to be assessing some of these races?Rachel Bovard: It was a good night for Trump’s endorsements, which remain critical and decisive, particularly when he’s picking candidates who can change the ideological direction of the party. No other major figure in the G.O.P. has shown they can do the same.Tim Miller: An early agreement! The Republicans put up a slate of “Big Lie” candidates at the top of the ticket in an important swing state last night, which seems pretty important.Bovard: I would dispute the notion that Arizona represented “a slate of ‘Big Lie’ candidates.”Miller: Well, Lake has long brought up fraud claims about the 2020 election. Rare potential evidence of the party bucking Trump could come from the Third Congressional District in Washington, benefited by a “jungle” primary — candidates for an office, regardless of party, run on the same ballot, and the top two candidates square off in the general election. If the Trump-endorsed candidate loses, it seems a good endorsement for that set up.Bovard: But the Blake Masters campaign in particular represented a depth of issues that appealed to Arizona voters and could represent a new generation of Republicans.Douthat: Let’s get into that question a little bit. One of the questions hanging over the phenomenon of Trumper populism is whether it represents any kind of substantial issue-based change in what the G.O.P. stands for, or whether it’s just all about fealty to Trump.The Masters campaign and the Lake campaign seem to represent different answers to that question — Masters leveraging Trump’s support to try to push the party in a more nationalist or populist direction on trade, foreign policy, family policy, other issues, and Lake just promising to stop the next (alleged) steal. Or do we think that it’s all the same phenomenon underneath?Bovard: A very significant part of Trump’s appeal, what he perhaps taught the G.O.P., was that he spoke for voters who stood outside of party orthodoxy on a number of issues. And that’s where Masters tried to distinguish himself. He had a provocative campaign message early in his campaign: American families should be able to survive on a single income. That presents all kinds of challenges to standard Republican economic policy, how we think about family policy and how the two fit together. He also seems to be fearless in the culture wars, something else that Republicans are anxious to see.So this constant distilling into the “Big Lie” overlooks something key: A sea change is slowly happening on the right as it relates to policy expectations.Miller: But you know who distilled the Masters campaign into the “Big Lie”? Blake Masters. One of his ads begins, “I think Trump won in 2020.” This is an insane view, and I assume none of us think Masters really believes it. So fealty to Trump’s delusions is the opening ante here. Had Masters run a campaign about his niche, Peter Thiel-influenced issue obsessions but said Trump lost and he was harming Republican voters by continuing to delude them about our democracy, he would’ve lost like Rusty Bowers did.I do think Masters has some differentiated policy ideas that are probably, not certainly, reflective of where the G.O.P. is headed, but that wasn’t the main thing here.Douthat: So Tim, speaking for the “it’s Trump fealty all the way down” camp, what separates the Arizona results from the very different recent results in Georgia, where Trump fealty was insufficient to defeat either Brian Kemp or even Brad Raffensperger?Miller: Two things: First, with Kemp, governing actually matters. With incumbents, primaries for governor can be somewhat different because of that. Kemp was Ron DeSantis-esque without the attention in his handling of Covid. (This does not extend all the way to full anti-Trump or Trump-skeptical governors like Larry Hogan of Maryland or Charlie Baker of Massachusetts — Kemp almost never said an ill word about Trump.)Second, the type of electorate matters. Republican voters actually bucked Trump in another state, my home state, Colorado. What do Georgia and Colorado have in common? Suburban sprawl around a major city that dominates the state and a young, college-educated population.Douthat: Does that sound right to you, Rachel? And is there anything we aren’t seeing about a candidate like Lake that makes her more than just a stalking horse for Trump’s own obsessions?Bovard: Tim is right in the sense that there is always nuance when it comes to state elections. That’s why I also don’t see the Washington State primary race as a definitive rejection of Trump, as Tim alluded to earlier. Lake is, as a candidate, bombastic on the election issue.Miller: “Bombastic” is quite the euphemism for completely insane. Deliberate lies. The same ones that led to the storming of the Capitol.Bovard: Well, I don’t see that as determining how she governs. She’s got an entire state to manage, if she wins, and there are major issues she’ll have to manage that Trump also spoke to: the border, primarily.By the way, I regularly meet with Democrats who still tell me the 2018 election was stolen, and Stacey Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia, so I’m not as pearl clutchy about it, no.Miller: “Pearl clutchy” is quite a way to describe a lie that has infected tens of millions of people, resulted in multiple deaths and the imprisonment of some of Trump’s most loyal supporters. I thought the populists were supposed to care about these people, but I guess worrying about their lives being ruined is just a little “pearl clutching.”Bovard: I know we don’t want to relitigate the entirety of Jan. 6, so I’ll just say I do worry about people’s lives being ruined. And the Jan. 6 Select Committee has further entrenched the divide that exists over this.Douthat: I’m going to enforce a pivot here, while using my moderator’s power to stipulate that I think Trump’s stolen-election narrative has been more destructive than the left’s Abrams-won-Georgia narrative or the “Diebold stole Ohio” narrative in 2004.If Lake wins her primary, can she win the general-election race? Can Doug Mastriano win in Pennsylvania? To what extent are we watching a replay of certain Republican campaigns in 2010 — long before Trump, it’s worth noting — where the party threw away winnable seats by nominating perceived extremists?Bovard: A key for G.O.P. candidates going forward is to embrace both elements of the cultural and economic argument. For a long time in the party these were seen as mutually exclusive, and post-Trump, I don’t think they are anymore. Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia in part by embracing working-class economic issues — leaning into repeal of the grocery tax, for example — and then pushing hard against critical race theory. He didn’t surge on economics alone.Douthat: Right, but Youngkin also did not have to run a primary campaign so deeply entangled with Trump. There’s clearly a sweet spot for the G.O.P. to run as economic moderates or populists and anti-woke fighters right now, but can a figure like Lake manage that in a general election? We don’t even know yet if Masters or J.D. Vance, who both explicitly want to claim that space, can grab it after their efforts to earn Trump’s favor.Tim, can these candidates win?Miller: Of course they can win. Midterm elections have historically washed in candidates far more unlikely than nominees like Masters (and Lake, if she is the nominee) or Mastriano from tossup swing states. Lake in particular, with her history in local news, would probably have some appeal to voters who have a personal affinity for her outside the MAGA base. Mastriano might be a slightly tougher sell, given his brand, vibe and Oath Keeper energy.Bovard: It’s long been conventional wisdom that you tack to the right in primaries and then move more to the center in the general, so if Lake wins, she will have to find a message that appeals to as many voters as possible. She would have to present a broad spectrum of policy priorities. The G.O.P. as a voting bloc has changed. Its voters are actively iterating on all of this, so previous assumptions about what appeals to voters don’t hold up as well. I tend to think there’s a lane for Trump-endorsed candidates who lean into the Trump-style economics and key culture fights.Miller: I just want to say here that I do get pissed about the notion that it’s us, the Never Trumpers, who are obsessed with litigating Jan. 6. Pennsylvania is a critical state that now has a nominee for governor who won because of his fealty to this lie, could win the general election and could put his finger on the scale in 2024. The same may be true in another key state, Arizona. This is a red-level threat for our democracy.A lot of Republicans in Washington, D.C., want to sort of brush it away just like they brushed away the threat before Jan. 6, because it’s inconvenient.Douthat: Let me frame that D.C. Republican objection a different way: If this is a red-level threat for our democracy, why aren’t Democrats acting like it? Why did Democratic Party money enter so many of these races on behalf of the more extreme, stop-the-steal Republican? For example, given the closeness of the race, that sort of tactic quite possibly helped defeat Meijer in Michigan.Miller: Give me a break. The ads from the left trying to tilt the races were stupid and frankly unpatriotic. I have spoken out about this before. But it’s not the Democrats who are electing these insane people. Were the Democrats responsible for Mark Finchem? Mehmet Oz? Herschel Walker? Mastriano won by over 20 points. This is what Republican voters want.Also, advertising is a two-way street. If all these self-righteous Republicans were so angry about the ads designed to promote John Gibbs, they could’ve run pro-Meijer ads! Where was Kevin McCarthy defending his member? He was in Florida shining Mr. Trump’s shoes.Douthat: Rachel, I watched that Masters ad that Tim mentioned and listened to his rhetoric around the 2020 election, and it seemed like he was trying to finesse things, make an argument that the 2020 election somehow wasn’t fair in the way it was administered and covered by the press without going the Sidney Powell route to pure conspiracism.But let’s take Masters’s spirit of generalized mistrust and reverse its direction: If you were an Arizona Democrat, why would you trust a Governor Lake or a Secretary of State Mark Finchem to fairly administer the 2024 election?Bovard: Honestly, the thing that concerns me most is that there is zero trust at all on elections at this moment. If I’m a Democrat, I don’t trust the Republicans, and vice versa. Part of that lack of trust is that we aren’t even allowed to question elections anymore — as Masters did, to your point, without going full conspiracy.We regain trust by actually allowing questions and full transparency. This is one of the things that worries me about our political system. Without any kind of institutional trust, or trust of one another, there’s a breakdown.Miller: This is preposterous. Arizona had several reviews of their election. The people lying about the election are the problem.Douthat: Last questions: What do you think are the implications of the big pro-life defeat in the Kansas abortion referendum, for either abortion policy or the November elections?Bovard: It shows two headwinds that the pro-life movement is up against. First is money. Reporting shows that pro-abortion advocates spent millions against the amendment, and Democrats in many key races across the country are outpacing Republicans in fund-raising. Second, it reflects the confusion that exists around this issue post-Roe. The question presented to Kansas voters was a microcosm of the general question in Roe: Should abortion be removed from the state Constitution and be put in the hands of democratically elected officials? Yet it was sometimes presented as a binary choice between a ban or no ban. (This early headline from Politico is an example: “Kansas voters block effort to ban abortion in state constitutional amendment vote.”)But I don’t think it moves the needle on the midterms.Miller: I view it slightly differently. I think most voters are in a big middle that Republicans could even use to their advantage if they didn’t run to the extremes. Voters do not want blanket abortion bans or anything that can be construed as such. Something that moved the status quo significantly to the pro-life right but still maintained exceptions and abortion up to a certain, reasonable point in pregnancy would be politically palatable.So this will only be an effective issue for Democrats in turnout and in places where Republicans let them make it an issue by going too far to the extreme.Douthat: Finally, a different short-answer question for you both. Rachel, say Masters and Vance are both in the Senate in 2023 as spokesmen for this new culturally conservative economic populism you favor. What’s the first bill they co-sponsor?Bovard: I’d say a large tax on university endowments.Douthat: Tim, adding the evidence of last night to the narrative, can Ron DeSantis (or anyone else, but let’s be honest, there isn’t anyone else) beat Trump in a Republican primary in 2024?Miller: Sad to end with a wishy-washy pundit answer but … maybe! Trump seems to have a plurality right now within the party on 2024, and many Republicans have an affinity for him. So if it were Mike Pence, Chris Christie or Liz Cheney, they would have no chance.Could DeSantis thread a needle and present himself as a more electable Trump? Some of the focus groups The Bulwark does makes it seem like that’s possible. But will he withstand the bright lights and be able to pull it off? Will Trump be indicted? A lot of known unknowns. I’d put DeSantis as an underdog, but it’s not impossible that he could pull it off.Douthat: There is absolutely no shame in the wishy-washy pundit game. Thanks so much to you both for joining me.Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. Rachel Bovard is the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute and a tech columnist at The Federalist. Tim Miller, a writer at The Bulwark, is the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Doug Mastriano says his antisemitic ally ‘doesn’t speak for me’

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      After days avoiding questions about antisemitic remarks by a supporter of his campaign, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, said on Thursday that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.’’Mr. Mastriano has faced mounting criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike since it was revealed in early July that he paid $5,000 in campaign funds to the far-right social media site Gab. The payment, for “consulting,’’ apparently was intended to bring Mr. Mastriano a broader following on Gab, which is known as a haven for white nationalists and users banned from other platforms.In defending Mr. Mastriano’s ties to Gab in recent days, its founder, Andrew Torba, repeatedly made antisemitic remarks and said in one video that neither he nor Mr. Mastriano would give interviews to non-Christian journalists.Mr. Mastriano on Thursday did not condemn Mr. Torba. He blamed Democrats and “the media” for the controversy. “Andrew Torba doesn’t speak for me or my campaign,’’ Mr. Mastriano wrote in a statement released on Twitter. “I reject anti-Semitism in any form. Recent smears by the Democrats and the media are blatant attempts to distract Pennsylvanians from suffering inflicted by Democrat policies.”While Mr. Mastriano had remained silent about Gab earlier, Mr. Torba had responded to reports about the payment by Mr. Mastriano’s campaign in a series of livestreamed videos.“My policy is not to conduct interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian or with outlets who aren’t Christian, and Doug has a very similar media strategy where he does not do interviews with these people,” Mr. Torba said in one video, according to The Jerusalem Post. “He does not talk to these people. He does not give press access to these people. These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers, and they want to destroy you.”On Tuesday, Mr. Torba used an antisemitic trope in response to criticism from the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, who had condemned Mr. Mastriano for using Gab to post messages and gain political supporters.“We’re not bending the knee to the 2 percent anymore,” Mr. Torba said in a video, an apparent reference to the rough percentage of the country that is Jewish. “We’re taking back our country,” he added. “We’re taking back our government, so deal with it.”Mr. Mastriano, a far-right Pennsylvania state senator who has falsely argued that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, rarely speaks to traditional news outlets.In recent days, pressure from Republicans in Pennsylvania and beyond for Mr. Mastriano to condemn Gab and quit the site has grown. Andy Reilly, the national Republican committeeman for Pennsylvania, who hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Mastriano at his suburban Philadelphia home on Wednesday, said in an interview that Gab was “shameful” and “shouldn’t be part of the usual political dialogue.”“Doug should make sure he makes it clear that he doesn’t agree with the people posting hateful things on the site,’’ Mr. Reilly said several hours before Mr. Mastriano released his statement on Thursday evening.The two-paragraph statement neither addressed whether Mr. Mastriano, like Mr. Torba, follows a policy of not giving interviews to non-Christian news outlets, nor clarified why he had paid Gab $5,000. According to reporting by HuffPost, Mr. Mastriano may have paid Gab to increase his following on the site: New users appeared to be automatically assigned as followers of the Republican nominee.About an hour before Mr. Mastriano’s statement was posted, Mr. Torba wrote on Gab that he did not work for the Mastriano campaign and was not its consultant. “The campaign paid Gab as a business for advertising during the primary,” he said. “The campaign posts on Gab, as do 50+ other campaigns from around the country. That’s the extent of the relationship.”Later on Thursday, Mr. Mastriano made his Gab account private and then removed it, according to The Forward.The Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, responded to Mr. Mastriano’s statement Thursday by recalling his praise for Mr. Torba in May: “Thank God for what you’ve done.” More

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      Doug Mastriano Faces Criticism Over His Backing From Antisemitic Ally

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      Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, is under increasing scrutiny over his connections to the far-right social media platform Gab and its founder, who has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks defending their ties.Early this month, news emerged that Mr. Mastriano’s campaign had paid Gab, a haven for white nationalists and users banned from other platforms, $5,000 for “consulting,” according to a state filing that was first uncovered by Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group.Since then, Mr. Mastriano, a far-right state senator who has falsely argued that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and who rarely speaks to traditional news outlets, has ignored criticism of his association with Gab.But the platform’s founder and chief executive, Andrew Torba, has hit back — most recently, using an anti-Jewish trope.“We’re not bending the knee to the 2 percent anymore,” Mr. Torba said in a video this week, an apparent reference to the rough percentage of the country that is Jewish.Mr. Torba was responding to an appearance on MSNBC on Tuesday by Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, in which he criticized Mr. Mastriano for using Gab to post messages and gain political supporters.Mr. Torba and his platform support Christian nationalism, the view that America was founded to advance Christians and biblical values.“We’re taking back our country,” he added. “We’re taking back our government, so deal with it.”“Andrew Torba is one of the most toxic people in public life right now,” Mr. Goldblatt told MSNBC. “Elected officials who engage in this kind of rhetoric aren’t just flirting with fascism, they are bringing it to the forefront of their political argument.”Shortly after the payment from the Mastriano campaign, in April, Mr. Torba interviewed Mr. Mastriano on his site, when the candidate told him, “Thank God for what you’ve done.”Before Pennsylvania’s May 17 primary, Gab endorsed Mr. Mastriano, who was at the forefront of Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 results in the state.Mr. Mastriano won the nomination in a divided field, despite warnings by some Republican officials that he was too extreme to win in November. Recent polls have shown him running an unexpectedly close race against the Democratic nominee, Josh Shapiro.According to reporting by HuffPost, Mr. Mastriano may be paying Gab to increase his following on the site: New users appeared to be automatically assigned as followers of the Republican nominee.In a series of live-streamed videos in recent days, Mr. Torba, who is based in Pennsylvania, responded repeatedly to criticism of him and Mr. Mastriano by reinforcing his own Christian nationalist and antisemitic views.The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday quoted Mr. Torba as saying in one video that neither he nor Mr. Mastriano would give interviews to non-Christian journalists.“My policy is not to conduct interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian or with outlets who aren’t Christian, and Doug has a very similar media strategy where he does not do interviews with these people,” Mr. Torba reportedly said. “He does not talk to these people. He does not give press access to these people. These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers and they want to destroy you.”Mr. Mastriano did not respond to a request for comment sent to his campaign.Mr. Torba, asked for details of his consulting arrangement with Mr. Mastriano, responded in an email: “I only speak to Christian news outlets.”Republican and Democratic Jewish leaders alike have called for Mr. Mastriano to leave Gab. “We strongly urge Doug Mastriano to end his association with Gab, a social network rightly seen by Jewish Americans as a cesspool of bigotry and antisemitism,” Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told The Philadelphia Inquirer last week.In Pittsburgh, Jewish and Black leaders condemned Mr. Mastriano for his association with Gab, which was used to post antisemitic attacks by the man accused of massacring 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.Mr. Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, began an investigation of Gab after the killings, though he eventually dropped it.On Monday, Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, appealed to donors in a tweet to “stop” Mr. Mastriano, who he said “is paying Gab — the same platform that empowered the Tree of Life killer — thousands of dollars to recruit antisemites and white supremacists to his campaign.” More

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      Has Democrat John Fetterman found a way to beat the reality-TV politician?

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      Has Democrat John Fetterman found a way to beat the reality-TV politician?The Pennsylvania Senate hopeful is wielding social media might against star power. His secret weapon? Snooki Whether it’s Ronald, Donald or Arnold, Americans are all too familiar with the phenomenon of the second-tier celebrity turned politician. So when the TV doctor Mehmet Oz decided to run for Senate in Pennsylvania, his background as a B-lister seemed well suited to the role.As he proudly notes in his official biography, Oz has won Emmys, has written eight bestsellers, and was featured on six seasons of The Oprah Winfrey Show. He is a master of traditional media. But now the daytime TV star is facing a Democratic opponent who has proved himself a media success story in his own right – though his area of expertise is Twitter, not television.Dr Oz embraced Trump’s big lie – will Maga voters reward him in Senate race?Read moreWhen John Fetterman entered the race, the relatively little known lieutenant governor had his work cut out for him: a Bernie Sanders backer who supports universal healthcare and a $15 minimum wage, he is running to replace a Republican in a swing state.But he has rapidly made himself a national name as he tears into Oz on social media – hammering him, in particular, on the question of whether he’s really from Pennsylvania at all. Oz has said he moved there in 2020 – to a place his wife’s parents own. Before that, he lived in New Jersey for decades.In Fetterman’s view, Oz is still a Jersey boy, and the Democrat has weaponized meme after meme against his rival. Fetterman has posted a picture of Oz’s face on a Pennsylvania driver’s license, labeled “McLovin” in an homage to cinema’s best known fake ID. He has mocked his rival for apparently filming an ad for his Pennsylvania campaign in his New Jersey mansion. And he has employed the services of the most Jersey person this side of Bruce Springsteen: Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi.Hey @DrOz 👋JERSEY loves you + will not forget you!!! 🥰 pic.twitter.com/YmaXfMpzUK— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 14, 2022
      In a clip that has received more than 84,000 likes on Twitter, the Jersey Shore reality star offers some savage sympathy: “I heard that you moved from New Jersey to look for a new job,” she says. “I know you’re away from home and you’re in a new place, but … don’t worry, because you’ll be back in New Jersey soon.”Fetterman’s attacks aren’t limited to the digital world. He had a pilot fly a banner over the Jersey shore saying, “Hey Dr Oz. Welcome home to NJ! ❤️ John.” He posted the image online, flexing Pennsylvania credentials by dedicating it to “yinz and youse down the shore today” – a combination of Pittsburgh and Philly-speak. He’s also selling a “Dr Oz for NJ” sticker. And in a coup de grâce on Thursday, Fetterman confirmed that he had launched a petition to have Oz honored in the New Jersey Hall of Fame, which celebrates the accomplishments of state residents.Oz himself has a ways to go when it comes to the art of the political stunt. He posted pictures of himself visiting Pat’s and Geno’s, the dueling cheesesteak shops, across the street from each other, that are a Philadelphia landmark. It was a rookie error, akin to a New Yorker taking a selfie at Times Square – any local can list at least five cheesesteak places they’ve deemed better than those two. Fetterman called Oz a “tourist”, and even Pat’s itself replied: “Do you even live in [Pennsylvania]? And can you spell the town you live in?” (Oz misspelled the name of his supposed home town, Huntingdon Valley, in a campaign filing.) When you’re getting burned by a cheesesteak shop, you know you need to up your social media game.While Fetterman has proved himself a natural in the art of trolling, you can almost feel the blood, sweat and tears poured into Oz’s efforts. When he posted a doctored image of Bernie Sanders with Fetterman labeled “best friends”, Fetterman replied with a meme mocking Oz’s graphic design skills. When the Republican shared a picture of a dictionary definition of “John Fetterman” – a “Bernie Sanders socialist” who is “wrong for Pennsylvania” – it felt like exactly what it was: an attempt to crowbar old-fashioned political boilerplate into a modern format. (It also placed “John Fetterman” between “justice” and “jurisdiction”, which, as several people pointed out, is not how the alphabet works.)To all yinz + youse down the shore today: hope you saw my very nice message ✈️ to one of NJ’s famous longtime residents 🥰 pic.twitter.com/xiVd6q5JIm— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 10, 2022
      Perhaps in desperation, Oz has recently adopted a new tactic: a “John Fetterman basement tracker” that records how long it’s been since the Democrat has held a public event. But instead of coming off as a blow to his opponent, the strategy just seems mean-spirited. What took Fetterman off the campaign trail was a stroke on 13 May.Despite his pause from IRL campaigning, Fetterman’s strategy appears to be working. Polls have repeatedly put the Democrat on top in the race, and he has raised about nine times as much as his opponent since April. A win in November may serve as a political lesson about the importance of carving out a digital identity and could be crucial to Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate. Like so many others these days, Fetterman is working from home – and finding that he can still get things done.TopicsUS politicsPennsylvaniaUS SenateSocial mediaTwitterfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Fetterman Hopes to Return to Senate Campaign Trail Soon, He Says in New Interview

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      Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senate nominee who has been off the campaign trail for more than two months after having a stroke in mid-May, told his hometown newspaper this week that he hopes to return to in-person campaigning “very soon” even as he acknowledged some persisting health effects.“I would never be in this if we were not absolutely, 100 percent able to run fully and to win — and we believe that we are,” Mr. Fetterman told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday, his first interview since falling ill.Mr. Fetterman ​​had a stroke days before the Democratic primary in May and had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted on the day of the primary. At the time, his campaign described the move as a standard procedure that would address “the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation.” In early June, his campaign acknowledged that he also had a heart condition called cardiomyopathy, which can lead to heart failure, and his doctor said he had appeared to have left other heart issues untreated for years.Mr. Fetterman said he “almost died” and vowed to focus on his recovery before returning to the trail.Since then, his campaign has kept up an aggressive and attention-grabbing social media and television presence, painting his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, as more at home in New Jersey than Pennsylvania. But the public has seen little from Mr. Fetterman, save for the occasional brief video.In the Post-Gazette interview, which was conducted by video — and Mr. Fetterman used closed captioning to ensure he did not miss words, the paper said — the candidate said he was walking four to five miles a day, participating in campaign strategy sessions and is now increasingly attending fund-raisers, with several scheduled for this week. He greeted volunteers in person recently, and he also said he was working with a speech therapist.“I might miss a word every now and then in a conversation, or I might slur two words. Even then, I think that’s infrequent,” Mr. Fetterman told the paper. “So I feel like we are ready to run.”He stressed that “physically, I have no limits,” though he also acknowledged that “my hearing is still a little bit not perfect.”Several people who attended a virtual fund-raiser with Mr. Fetterman recently said they were encouraged to see that he seemed to be improving, but also said that he did not sound quite like he did before the stroke — as Mr. Fetterman has implicitly acknowledged.“We saw a candidate whom we all support but who was still recovering,” said Phyllis Snyder, a board member of J Street, the liberal Israel-focused organization. J Street Pennsylvania and the organization’s political arm were listed as hosting the fund-raiser. “We hope that that will continue. But he was very engaged.”She added that Mr. Fetterman typically “speaks what’s on his mind. I’d say he was just a little more measured and careful.”Other attendees said it was occasionally evident when he was reaching for a word.“I don’t think he’s totally back yet,” said Ed Feinstein, a lawyer in Pittsburgh who also attended the event. “But he was animated, and he answered questions.”“He seemed to have energy,” he added, “which I’d been worried about.”Indeed, plenty of Pennsylvania Democrats have privately been anxious about when Mr. Fetterman will return to making public appearances. He has led a number of public polls over Dr. Oz, who faces challenges with his own base. But Pennsylvania is a highly competitive state, and may represent Democrats’ best chance to pick up a seat.Given the stakes of the election and the intense nature of running a statewide contest, Mr. Feinstein said that “I came away encouraged. But I’m still concerned.”“A lot of his appeal is when you see him,” he continued. “He needs to get out there and talk to people in small and larger groups. And that’s grueling, there’s no question about it.”In a statement, Mr. Fetterman’s spokesman, Joe Calvello, said Mr. Fetterman was “doing incredibly well for a guy who had a stroke two months ago and is well on his way to a full recovery.”Noting Mr. Fetterman’s own assessment of his health, he continued, “he will occasionally miss a word or slur a word now and then. This is all part of the recovery process.”And certainly, he is not the first politician to suffer a stroke or heart problems. Former Vice President Dick Cheney had a defibrillator implanted in 2001. He finished two terms in the White House, including a re-election battle in 2004.In a sign of accelerating activity, Mr. Fetterman is set to attend three in-person fund-raisers in Philadelphia on Thursday, Mr. Calvello confirmed. More