Who is Doug Mastriano, the state senator running for Pa. governor?

State Sen. Doug Mastriano won Pennsylvania’s crowded Republican primary for governor in May by casting himself as the only true conservative in the race, mocking rivals as RINOs, a partisan slur that means “Republicans in name only.”

Candidates often try shift to the middle of the political spectrum after the primary. That has been a challenge for Mastriano, who has unsuccessfully courted big-dollar Republican groups for support.

His campaign has lapsed back to his primary rhetoric, suggesting that the GOP establishment “don’t actually want a true conservative like him to win.”

The Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, has used Mastriano’s rhetoric, policy positions, intraparty feuds, and especially a call for a complete ban on abortion in the state, to suggest he is too radical to serve as governor.

Playing into Shapiro’s tactics: Mastriano was subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, where he was seen passing through police barriers but not entering the Capitol. His attorney tangled with the committee before a brief Mastriano appearance, where he where he refused to answer most questions and walked out. Mastriano is now suing the committee.

With all this flying about, Mastriano has chosen an isolated path to the Nov. 8 general election.

He mostly refuses to engage with journalists. Instead, Mastriano sticks to a schedule of events where he encounters only supporters and fills his Facebook pages with videos about the campaign. He grants interviews only to conservative radio show hosts and podcasters who shower him with support.

That worked with the GOP base in the primary, even as other Republicans scrambled unsuccessfully to stop Mastriano, who won the crowded primary by 24 points.

It has not been as effective for the general election, with an average of polling compiled by the websites Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight showing Shapiro more than 10 points ahead.

Mastriano, 58, served for three decades in the U.S. Army, retiring in 2017 as a colonel after serving in Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

His first campaign, a 2018 primary for a U.S. House seat in central Pennsylvania, ended in defeat. He won a 2019 special election for his state Senate district, and a full four-year term in 2020.

Mastriano lives in Fayetteville, a small burg of 3,200 people in central Pennsylvania’s Franklin County.

Mastriano touts his campaign as an effort to restore freedoms he says have been taken away through “heavy-handed draconian policies” to stem the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s also one of the most prominent election deniers in Pennsylvania.

“There are a lot of people running for governor now,” Mastriano said in a campaign video about COVID policies. “And I look across the field, and I can say none of them did anything to alleviate the suffering of the people of Pennsylvania.”

Mastriano also promises to repeal the 2019 state law that allowed for no-excuse mail ballots. He falsely claims the law “compromised our elections,” but rarely notes that he voted in support of it, like most Republicans in the state legislature.

And Mastriano has co-sponsored so-called “heartbeat” legislation that would ban abortion once cardiac activity is detected in the embryo, usually around six weeks into a pregnancy. Many women don’t know they’re pregnant that early, effectively banning most abortions.

Mastriano declared abortion his No. 1 priority during the primary, vowing to ban the procedure with no exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the pregnant person. He tried to walk that back a bit after his primary win, saying a governor can only sign into law what the state legislature sends to him.

Mastriano, like his Republican opponents, was eager for an endorsement from former President Donald Trump. He said in 2021 that Trump encouraged him to run for governor, prompting Trump’s camp to note that wasn’t an endorsement.

Trump waited until the Saturday before the primary to give Mastriano the nod, citing his embrace of the former president’s false claims about the 2020 election.

And like other primary candidates, Mastriano has surrounded himself with Trump-affiliated advisers, including former national security advisor Mike Flynn, and Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer.

Mastriano has run well behind Shapiro in campaign resources. He reported donations of just under $3.2 million from early June to mid-September. He spent nearly $1 million of that and had about $2.5 million in the bank as of mid-September.

Shapiro raised $25.4 million in the same period and spent nearly $28 million, leaving nearly $11 million in the bank. That has allowed him to spend millions on statewide television ads that attempt to define Mastriano, who can afford only a fraction of that for television.

In the days after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Mastriano faced calls for his resignation from the state legislature. The congressional committee probing the attack subpoenaed Mastriano in February, seeking information “about efforts to send false slates of electors to Washington and change the outcome of the 2020 election.”

Mastriano supported efforts to have the legislature to send a pro-Trump slate of electors to Congress, spoke with Trump in the aftermath of the election, and was present on Capitol grounds the day of the riot, according to U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee.

Mastriano, who spent thousands of dollars in campaign money to bus supporters to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, has said he did not cross police lines and left when things started to turn violent. Video that circulated online after the event appears to show Mastriano and his wife walking through breached police barricades that day.

He dismissed the people who circulated those images as “angry partisans” so “blinded by their hatred for all things Donald Trump.”