Jenna Ellis, adviser to Doug Mastriano’s campaign for governor, picks another GOP fight

Jenna Ellis is at it again, picking fights with big names in the Republican Party in her role as senior legal adviser to Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for governor in Pennsylvania.

Ellis on Tuesday accused Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel of “snubbing” Mastriano and Karl Rove of “running attack ads” against him.

Those claims came in a long Twitter thread in which Ellis rejected the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Colorado, her home state, as being insufficiently conservative and then pushed back against a swarm of critics who accused her of harming the party.

Rove, a top staffer for former President George W. Bush, cofounded the super PAC American Crossroads in 2010 and still serves as an adviser. He was not involved in television ads the group is running, criticizing the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, according to American Crossroads spokesperson Jack Pandol.

» READ MORE: Jenna Ellis demanded that a GOP governors group give Doug Mastriano money. It didn’t go well.

The 30-second ads contrast Fetterman’s record on the state Board of Pardons with that of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor. Viewers see pictures of the two Democrats emblazoned with the words “225 times,” noting cases where Shapiro opposed pardons and Fetterman supported them.

Both serve on the Board of Pardons due to the elected offices they currently hold.

Pandol said American Crossroads was not trying to boost Shapiro’s candidacy and sought to highlight the “extreme and permissive views on crime” held by Fetterman.

Ellis, in a text message to The Inquirer, called Rove a “snake” and said the rise of candidates like former President Donald Trump was “fueled” by voters rejecting Republican establishment figures such as Rove.

“The people hated being abused by the establishment GOP, which still believes it has a monopoly on gatekeeping Republican candidates,” Ellis wrote. “For the establishment, it’s not about whose policy is best for the people, it’s about who will be subservient.”

She also noted Trump’s endorsement of Mastriano and his decisive win May’s Republican primary among a crowd of candidates better aligned with the GOP establishment.

American Crossroads has $4.4 million reserved in the Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia television markets in the final two weeks of the election, with 58% of that spending in Philadelphia, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising.

» READ MORE: ‘We must all hang together’: Doug Mastriano courts a still-standoffish Republican governors group

Rachel Lee, an RNC spokesperson, pushed back on Ellis in an email that said, “Elections are won on the ground, not on Twitter.”

Lee said the RNC “has built a massive ground game operation to help elect Republicans up and down the ballot” in Pennsylvania. That included voter registration drives, nearly 6 million “voter contacts,” and “a massive election integrity operation.”

McDaniel has also attended four Pennsylvania rallies in the last 10 days, Lee noted.

Ellis, who previously served as a lawyer for Trump’s failed effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania over a series of debunked fraud claims, has a history of decrying Republican uninterest in Mastriano’s campaign.

She tweeted criticism last month of the Republican Governors Association’s lack of financial support for Mastriano, who unsuccessfully courted that deep-pocketed group in June.

“The Republican Governors Association would rather see an insane extremist Democrat win in Pennsylvania than have a Republican they can’t control,” Ellis said in a tweet, which was later deleted.

Ellis has turned heads with Twitter criticism of Shapiro, attacking a Washington Post story last week that focused on his Jewish faith.

“Josh Shapiro is at best a secular Jew in the same way Joe Biden is a secular Catholic,” tweeted Ellis to her 887,000 followers, calling both Democrats “extremists” on abortion and transgender issues.

Shapiro, who has cast Mastriano as too extreme to be governor, used her words as further proof for that claim.

Ellis dismissed any criticism of her behavior in that controversy as a “clown world attempt to distract” from important issues in the race.

Ellis announced last year that she was leaving the Republican Party after the Washington Post reported about a November 2020 email from an RNC lawyer who called her and other Trump attorneys “a joke” for misleading voters with false claims of election fraud.