Ron DeSantis is campaigning for Doug Mastriano in Pittsburgh, but a multifaith group is pushing back
The Florida governor campaigns Friday with Mastriano, who faces a lingering controversy in his bid for governor for working with the social media platform Gab.
State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, is routinely rigid in his campaign rhetoric.
But he was willing to shift his tone when it comes to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who will appear Friday afternoon at a Pittsburgh rally for Mastriano.
Mastriano has campaigned for months, vowing to make the conservative DeSantis administration look like “amateur hour” if he is elected. But in the last week, Mastriano has changed that campaign line to promise Pennsylvania will “look like the Florida of the north” instead.
Friday’s event, part of a four-state “United and Win” tour sponsored by the conservative nonprofit Turning Points Action, has prolonged a lingering controversy for Mastriano, after he spent $5,000 in April using the social media platform Gab to promote his campaign.
Gab, notorious for antisemitic comments, is run by Andrew Torba, a Christian nationalist who regularly denounces other religions.
A multifaith and bipartisan group of Pittsburgh community and religious leaders on Wednesday warned that the Christian nationalism Mastriano espouses in his campaign could lead to hate and jingoism — and then violence.
A Gab user is accused of posting plans on the site just before allegedly killing 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, has noted that in a pair of campaign ads this week.
» READ MORE: Doug Mastriano demands debates run by the campaigns instead of media outlets
Jeffery Letwin, a Tree of Life member, accused Mastriano of “affiliating” with neo-Nazis and complained about the Franklin County Republican’s comments during the primary campaign, when he compared gun-control options to Nazi Germany and abortion to the Holocaust.
“Let me say how shocked I am that Ron DeSantis, the governor of a state with a large Jewish population, would align himself with an extremist candidate like Doug Mastriano,” Letwin said. “Frankly, we don’t need Mr. DeSantis coming to Pittsburgh, where this community has proven itself stronger than hate.”
Jamie Gibson, a retired rabbi from Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, noted that Mastriano has called the separation of church and state “a myth,” an assertion Gibson said runs counter to the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on Congress making laws for “the establishment of religion.”
“As long as his campaign is framed in the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, Muslims and Jews and liberal Christians are all under threat,” Gibson said. “We’ve learned to our dear loss that words matter. When people say they want to harm us, we now believe that, because they’ve done it.”
Torba endorsed Mastriano and interviewed him before the May primary. In the interview, Mastriano praised Torba, saying: “Thank God for what you’ve done.”
In July, Mastriano appeared to delete his Gab account while announcing that Torba does not speak for his campaign. “I reject antisemitism in any form,” said Mastriano, blaming Democrats and the media for the controversy.
» READ MORE: Josh Shapiro’s new ads cite Doug Mastriano’s ties to antisemitic content on Gab
The Pittsburgh group said it is not affiliated with or organized by Shapiro’s campaign, and Letwin said it was not planning to protest the DeSantis rally.
That event, at a downtown hotel, is being held just a few blocks from Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of progressive activists, candidates, and elected officials. A Netroots spokesperson said Thursday organizers have not heard of any planned protests.
State Rep. Austin Davis, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor from Allegheny County, plans to speak there Friday morning with local community and faith leaders.
“At a time when we’re seeing a dangerous rise in antisemitism across the country, Gov. DeSantis has alarmingly chosen to campaign with Doug Mastriano, who counts antisemitic extremists among his closest advisors, just five miles from the site of the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history,” Davis said in a campaign news release.
» READ MORE: Doug Mastriano’s comments on Islam and climate change resurface, the latest hit for his campaign
DeSantis also faced criticism at home for the Mastriano event. Rabbi Mark Winer, president of the Florida Democratic Party’s Jewish Caucus, and other activists called on DeSantis on Thursday to cancel it.
“When he does this, he fertilizes the soil in which those seeds of ugliness and American soul germinate and come to full blossom,” Winer said. “And the worst elements in America come out then.”