Doug Mastriano claims secret Democratic support as more Republicans oppose him

Another Republican super PAC went public this week with plans to oppose State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for governor in Pennsylvania.

But Mastriano has a plan!

He claims a secret cabal of elected Democratic leaders are helping him on the sly to defeat their party’s nominee, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

Clout spies a few differences in those stories.

The Republicans who oppose Mastriano are issuing public statements about their plans and will file campaign finance reports showing where their funding comes from.

And Mastriano? He wants you to take his word on it.

The Republican Accountability PAC announced this week it plans to spend $10 million “to defeat anti-democracy Republican candidates in six key swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.”

Mastriano is that national PAC’s first target as it gathers and posts video testimonials from Republican voters who see his policies as too extreme and express concern about his attendance at the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The project, which plans to spend $2 million to oppose Mastriano, grew out of a similar effort in 2020 to identify Republican voters who opposed a second term for former President Donald Trump.

“We found that in 2020 the most effective messages when you’re trying to reach somebody come from people who look like them, someone they can relate to,” said Meaghan Leister, the new PAC’s chief for national communications and outreach. “People are so tribal about politics. Sometimes they need to see someone who looks like them to give them permission.”

Leister said the PAC is likely to throw some shade Mehmet Oz’s way, too. Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, and Mastriano were endorsed by Trump.

A state super PAC, Republicans 4 Shapiro, founded last week by current and former GOP elected and appointed officials, declared Mastriano extreme, dangerous, out of touch, and unacceptable. Craig Snyder, a spokesperson for that effort, said “the more the merrier” as the national PAC entered the fray.

That PAC hopes Republican voters split the ticket, supporting Shapiro and Oz.

As for Mastriano, he made his big announcement Wednesday on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon — the twice-indicted, once-pardoned former Trump adviser.

Bannon, by the way, is set for trial Monday on criminal contempt charges in connection with his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Mastriano, who has said he did nothing illegal on Jan. 6, was also subpoenaed by the Select Committee. His attorney this week said an interview with the committee has not been scheduled.

Speaking to a fawning Bannon, Mastriano knocked Republicans lining up to oppose him as “has-beens” while claiming to have “a whole list of Democrats” who support him because they “despise” Shapiro.

“Imagine that,” Mastriano said, “Democratic leaders behind the scenes, working for me.”

Bannon didn’t ask Mastriano to name names. The interview played into the nominee’s campaign strategy of speaking only to solicitous podcasters and supportive radio show hosts while casting himself as victim of any coverage from mainstream media outlets. He did not respond to Clout’s hails.

Shapiro’s campaign on Thursday said, “Mastriano is welcome to continue rejecting reality,” citing his continuing citation of debunked claims about the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania.

“Doug Mastriano is well known for peddling lies and bizarre conspiracy theories — his secret list of Democrats supporting him is as absurd as his claim that 1.2 million extra mail-in ballots were counted in 2020,” a Shapiro campaign spokesperson told Clout.

Joanna McClinton, the state House minority leader from Philadelphia, usually approaches the public arena with an emphasis on “good composure.”

Then came last week, when Republicans who control the House and Senate steamrolled Democrats with a bill that would ask voters to amend the state constitution to declare that there is no right to abortion in Pennsylvania.

McClinton, outraged that Democratic colleagues were “silenced” as they tried to add amendments to the bill, took to the House floor last Friday in a rousing denouncement of Republicans before the vote.

She equated their action to silencing “millions of voters” and stirred some GOP unrest by pointing out that some of them had supported throwing out all of the state’s 2020 presidential votes.

“We’re talking about women dying,” she said. “We’re talking about more than half the population not being able to make decisions when not even half this body has a uterus!”

A short clip of that speech now has more than 4.3 million views on Twitter and has spread to other social media platforms. McClinton was interviewed twice about it on MSNBC in the last week.

It came as a surprise. She was driving home from Harrisburg last Saturday as the clip spread. She planned a “low-key” Sunday, but her team told her to be “Zoom ready” for interviews. Her campaign fund collected $10,000 in 24 hours in small contributions from new donors.

McClinton said she will use that attention to focus on gaining legislative seats. She warned that Republicans ran this playbook in 2021 to curtail Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency powers, angered by his COVID-19 policies.

“I think this puts our November races for the House on the map,” McClinton said.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.