In the race for Pa. governor, Doug Mastriano demands debates run by the campaigns instead of media outlets

Labor Day is still three weeks away, but Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor, says he will not participate in standard debates this fall, claiming that the traditional format with an independent moderator would be “unfair” and a “trap” for him.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor, Mastriano wrote that he was “eager” to debate, but claimed that moderators from mainstream media outlets are “unpaid advocates and ideological allies of the Democrat candidates.”

Instead, Mastriano proposed debates that would each have two moderators — one selected by each campaign — who would ask an equal number of questions of the candidates. The costs, he said, would be covered by the campaigns or state political parties.

“The old model of unfair debates run by the mainstream news media or hosts with a hidden partisan agenda is not something I will entertain,” Mastriano wrote in the letter. “Let’s have fair debates or none at all.”

Debate negotiations with news outlets have been ongoing, and Mastriano’s proposal raises the possibility that the candidates will not meet in any debates.

The Shapiro campaign rejected Mastriano’s proposition, calling it an “obvious stunt.”

“Mastriano has spent his entire campaign refusing to answer questions from local outlets across Pennsylvania, refusing to leave his echo chamber of extremists on alt-right media,” said Shapiro spokesperson Will Simons.

The request for a new debate format is in line with the Republican’s strategy throughout his campaign for governor.

Mastriano, a state senator from Franklin County, has generally avoided mainstream news organizations, going so far as to block some reporters from attending his campaign events. In recent months, he has limited his interviews to laudatory conservative figures who are supportive of his candidacy and will not ask questions he doesn’t want to answer.

In May, Mastriano abruptly ended an interview with Delaware Valley Journal — a local conservative site — when he was asked about the Jan. 6 insurrection and a QAnon-linked conference he attended.

“You’re talking like an East German there,” said Mastriano, who had sought to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election based on false claims of fraud and had rented buses to take more than 130 supporters to Washington on Jan. 6.

Delaware Valley Journal, which has interviewed candidates for governor and U.S. Senate, and hosted a debate among Republican senatorial candidates, said no other candidate had walked out on an interview or debate. It described Mastriano’s actions as a “meltdown.”

Mastriano’s last appearance in a televised debate was in late April, when he joined three other Republican candidates at abc27 studios in Harrisburg. Under his new proposed debate format, an outside news or civic organization would not be involved.