This far-right GOPer’s possible 2024 Senate run is 'sure to give GOP leaders heart palpitations': report

07 March 2023

In the 2022 midterms, former President Donald Trump suffered major humiliations in Pennsylvania when two GOP candidates he endorsed in statewide races lost. Dr. Mehmet Oz was defeated by Democratic now-Sen. John Fetterman, and Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano suffered a shellacking at the hands of Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s new Democratic governor.

Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race was close in the end, but ultimately, Fetterman pulled off a narrow victory and flipped a seat that had been mostly in Republican hands for decades. But the gubernatorial race wasn't close at all; Shapiro, a former Pennsylvania state attorney general, defeated Mastriano by around 15 percent.

Mastriano campaigned on two things that proved very unpopular with Pennsylvania voters: the Big Lie and draconian abortion restrictions. The far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump in 2020 — a claim that has been debunked. And he proposed murder charges for women who have abortions. Shapiro, during the campaign, repeatedly described Mastriano as a dangerous extremist in his attack ads.

But Mastriano, according to an article written by Politico's Holly Otterbein and published on March 7, is considering running in another statewide race — this time, in Pennsylvania's 2024 U.S. Senate race. Three-term centrist Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. (the son of the late Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey, Jr.) is up for reelection.

Mastriano told Politico, "What do you do with a movement of 2.2 million? We're keeping it alive…. We've seen people in the past, other Republican gubernatorial candidates, they rise and they disappear when they lose. Why? You have people that love you and support you."

Bob Casey, Sr., who died in 2000, was an anti-abortion Democrat, as is his son. But the younger Casey isn't as strident on the issue. Mastriano indicated that if he does seek the GOP nomination in Pennsylvania's next U.S. Senate race, he will make abortion a priority.

The MAGA conspiracy theorist said of Casey, Jr., "I think he's a huge disappointment. He's nothing like his dad. His dad was more pro-life than most Republicans."

Casey, Jr. has a track record in Pennsylvania politics, famously unseating former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum in 2006 and winning reelection in 2012 and 2018. The younger Casey defeated Republican nominee Lou Barletta by 13 percent when he won a third term.

The Philadelphia-based Otterbein stresses that the possibility of Mastriano running for the U.S. Senate in 2024 is something that GOP strategists and organizers dread.

"In fact, Mastriano's flirtation with another statewide campaign is sure to give heart palpitations to GOP leaders," Otterbein reports. "When a blue wave swept across Pennsylvania in 2022 — Democrats won the gubernatorial race, Senate race and a majority of state House contests — most Republican officials pointed the finger at Mastriano. His staunchly anti-abortion stance that allowed for no exceptions, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, and his appearance at the Capitol the day of the January 6 attack alarmed many swing voters."

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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