State Sen. Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz, the GOP’s nominees in Pennsylvania for governor and Senate respectively, share little in common other than the support of former President Donald Trump.
They’re otherwise poised to go their separate way this fall, and that’s what some state Republicans believe is best.
“I think they should keep separate,” Lou Capozzi, chairman of the Cumberland County Republican Committee, told NBC News. “They have different messages. There’s some people who are going to be receptive to Doug’s message. And hopefully, they’ll vote for him. And there’s going to be people that are receptive to Oz’s message. And there may be some crossover.”
Mastriano, most prominently known for being outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and for being intimately involved in an effort to appoint fake electors to stop President Joe Biden from taking office, has sought to quell concerns among the state’s GOP establishment that he is too far-right to win this fall. Oz, a celebrity TV doctor who faced scrutiny from hardline conservatives for past comments on abortion and transgender youth, has tried to shore up his standing with the right-wing base while building inroads with independent voters.
Both of those efforts have been on parallel tracks. Mastriano and Oz have not made any firm commitment to campaign together or host joint fundraisers. Though they have appeared at the same state party functions or at events put on by outside groups, the two have done little to promote one another — Mastriano posting photos on Twitter and Facebook of the two at the Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police Convention in Erie last week was a notable exception.
But Trump-backed tickets in other areas have converged. In Arizona, Kari Lake, Trump’s pick for governor, and Blake Masters, his Senate choice, campaigned together on the eve of the primary. In Michigan, Matt DePerno, Trump’s preferred candidate for attorney general, joined Tudor Dixon, his choice for governor, on the campaign trail hours after he endorsed her late last month.
“It’s an awkward marriage,” Morgan Boyd, a Republican county commissioner in Lawrence County, which went for Trump by 30 points in 2020, said of Mastriano and Oz.
At a rally on Friday, Mastriano continued to question the results of the 2020 election. “If you ask questions about the 2020 election, you’re an election denier,” he said, as The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. “Are you serious? What a stupid thing to say.”
Boyd endorsed state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Mastriano’s Democratic opponent, but is voting for Oz and other Republicans on the November ballot. He criticized Mastriano as “pushing more hardline, hardcore social issues” he says are “outside the mainstream,” while crediting Oz for a sharper focus on the economy, immigration and healthcare.
“I think that Dr. Oz’s base is very different from Doug Mastriano’s base,” Boyd said. “I think it would be difficult for the two campaigns to reconcile and get on the same policy message when you have two very different groups of voters supporting them.”
While Mastriano and Oz have yet to join forces, their Democratic rivals have linked up for a coordinated effort backed by the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as The Associated Press reported in June.
That effort will help finance a ground game to register and persuade voters for both Shapiro and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee, who hosted his first public campaign event on Friday after suffering a stroke in May.
Surveys have consistently shown Mastriano and Oz trailing their Democratic rivals. A Fox News poll last month showed Mastriano trailing by 10 points while Oz was behind by 11.
Potentially complicating efforts to link up are Mastriano’s attacks on Oz during the primary. In March, he criticized Oz to a radio host for his ties to Oprah Winfrey and “the Hollywood class,” and for his recent move to Pennsylvania.
“We have tapes of him, you know, approving of abortion, suddenly, he’s pro-life now because his Republican primary, we have video of him, encouraging, you know, changing your gender and all this kind of stuff,” he said. “And so I just, you know, something’s wrong.”
Further, Mastriano told an interviewer in 2018 that Islam was not compatible with the Constitution, adding, “not all religions are created equal.” That year, he also shared an article on Facebook headlined “A Dangerous Trend: Muslims running for office,” as The Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.
Oz, who is running to be the first Muslim senator in U.S. history, earlier this year denounced what he called “Islamophobic and homophobic comments,” posted online by his then-rival Kathy Barnette (who Mastriano had backed), saying such postings were “disqualifying” for a candidate.
Neither campaign responded to requests for comment from NBC News. An official for the Republican National Committee, which handles coordination between campaigns, said the party is “working hand in glove to get out the vote with our statewide nominees, as well as all Republicans running up-and-down the ballot,” noting it has contacted more than 2.3 million voters in-state and has made investments in Democratic-leaning urban areas. The official said the RNC had worked more closely with the Oz campaign but described its efforts as “business as usual” so far.
In June, the Oz campaign told The Associated Press that Oz “supports the Republican ticket in Pennsylvania” and “looks forward to seeing (Mastriano) out on the trail this summer.”
“From his pledge to ban abortion with no exceptions, to his plot to overturn future elections, Doug Mastriano has spent his entire campaign making it clear he is too extreme for Pennsylvania,” Manuel Bonder, a Shapiro campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “Now, he’s showing he is even too extreme for his own out-of-touch running mate.”
In recent weeks, Mastriano has begun to coalesce the broader Pennsylvania GOP establishment around his campaign, which is at a significant resource disadvantage compared with that of Shapiro, who ran unopposed in the primary. Earlier this month, he rolled out endorsements from eight of nine Republican congressmen from the state, with Rep. Brain Fitzpatrick as the lone holdout. Fitzpatrick has endorsed Oz.
“Mastriano surprised a lot of people with the breadth of the grassroots organization he had in place,” former Rep. Keith Rothfus, R-Pa., told NBC News. “It was largely under the radar.”
Rothfus, who endorsed former Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., in the primary for governor but now backs Mastriano, said the candidates should both zero in on inflation, crime and energy policy. He expects them to come together as Election Day nears, particularly so they can increase their fundraising haul.
“That’s one of the issues people look at is the tremendous amount of money that’s being raised by both Fetterman and Shapiro,” he said. “I contend you don’t have to match dollar-for-dollar, but you have to have enough to get your message out.”
One local Republican Party leader said that while Oz has managed to grow his coalition in the GOP post-primary, Mastriano “seems to get more divisive as each day rolls on.” This GOP leader said the two would need to build a unified ground game to maximize voter turnout this fall.
“It’s hard to imagine the two personalities of Oz and Mastriano working the trail together,” the Republican leader said. “Oz is a stable, managed-speech type person. And Mastriano is a flamboyant, let it all hang out, God and country type of a person. And [Mastriano] appeals to a particular type of audience. And I don’t know if that’s exactly the kind of audience Oz is appealing to.”
Capozzi, who recently attended a GOP state committee meeting with both Mastriano and Oz present, also said it was tough to imagine the two working the trail together.
“I just don’t see that happening,” he said. “They’re just two totally different people. And that’s OK. Because the Republican Party, they cast a wide net. We have a big tent.”
Capozzi hopes the environment, which tends to favor the party out of power during a president’s first term, will provide the boost both need.
“So they can both win,” he said. “But it’s going to be a different path for each.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
