Suppose voters choose the Republican candidate, Doug Mastriano. And suppose that late within the night of Nov. 5, 2024, Gov. Mastriano thinks Pennsylvanians picked the flawed particular person to obtain the state’s presidential electoral votes. At present, candidate Mastriano promises that, as governor, he may have the chief energy, and a mandate, to intervene, thus plunging the nation into chaos.
A member of the Home of Representatives is 1/435th of 1 half of one of many federal authorities’s three branches. A senator is 1 p.c of the opposite half. There are limits to how a lot precise, versus aesthetic, harm a rogue legislator can do to the nation. A governor, nonetheless, can do necessary issues on his personal, particularly if, as in Pennsylvania, he appoints the secretary of state, who administers elections.
A plucky disregard for public opinion has its charms, however Mastriano maybe too wholeheartedly embraces John Quincy Adams’s 1825 injunction that politicians shouldn’t be “palsied by the desire of our constituents.” On this nation, Mastriano’s indifference to the parameters of the doable is clear relating to abortion, which he needs to outlaw, with no exceptions for rape, incest or the mom’s life, a coverage pleasing to (per a Pew Research Center poll) 8 p.c of People. He opposes same-sex marriage, which (per Gallup) 71 p.c help.
Mastriano simply received (by 23 factors) a nine-candidate Republican major, receiving 43.8 p.c of the vote. He’s a human cafeteria shelling out ample parts of all of the spicy fare that causes many Republicans to salivate, and provides most voters indigestion. He was at (however apparently not in) the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, having used marketing campaign funds to lease buses to deliver some supporters to the goings-on that President Donald Trump promised can be “wild.” Mastriano has raised money on a social media community frequented by antisemites, together with the one who’s accused of murdering 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
However what makes Mastriano greater than an particularly unique political exhibit is his vow to nominate a secretary of state “who’s delegated from me the facility to make the corrections to elections, the voting logs and all the pieces. And I can decertify each [voting] machine within the state.” Within the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Pennsylvania was determined by 0.7 and 1.2 share factors, respectively. In 2024, the state in all probability will once more be carefully contested, and its electoral votes might decide the nationwide winner. So, think about Mastriano, who has neither proof nor doubts that Trump received the 2020 election, decreeing “corrections” to the election. His motives are scary as a result of they’re pure: He has the scary sincerity of the unhinged whose delusions armor them in opposition to proof.
His state senate Republican colleagues, weary of his hair-on-fire method to advocating his monomania, removed him as chair of the pertinent committee. It might be tougher to cope with him as governor whereas a nation on tenterhooks is a horrified spectator to his protecting his marketing campaign promise to stop a recurrence of the 2020 monumental Pennsylvania voting fraud that by no means occurred.
Luckily, Mastriano’s Democratic opponent is two-term Legal professional Normal Josh Shapiro, 49, who when reelected in 2020 acquired about 3,000 extra votes than Joe Biden drew in carrying the state. Though 24 percent of Pennsylvanians are Catholics, Shapiro says he encounters from them extra gratitude than resentment for his tenacious assault on the church’s stonewalling about sexual abuses of youngsters by monks. Talking of faith, the writer of Ecclesiastes 10:19 — “cash answereth all issues” — was a greater author than political scientist. Sure, social media supplies cheap deliveries of messages, and there’s a steeply declining utility of {dollars} spent on tv adverts after a saturation is reached. Nonetheless, cash issues, and Shapiro will spend greater than Mastriano.
From the primary census (1790) till that of 1940, Pennsylvania was the second-most populous state. In 1960, it had as many electoral votes (32) as California, which today has 54 to Pennsylvania’s 19. This fall, nonetheless, the state will matter greater than another as its voters’ selection of governor will both imperil or reassure the nation that started right here.
