What a fucking monster:
Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano’s campaign for governor in Pennsylvania paid $5,000 for “consulting services” to Gab, a social media platform that provides a home for conspiracy theories and antisemitic content.
Gab is the website used by Robert Bowers, who is charged with killing 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill in 2018. Bowers routinely posted antisemitic content on Gab before the shooting, according to archives of the posts.
The payment was disclosed in a routine financial disclosure filed by the Mastriano campaign for the month of April. Mastriano’s campaign didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.
But Gab founder, CEO and majority owner Andrew Torba said in an email that Mastriano’s $5,000 campaign payment on April 28 was for an advertising campaign. Torba has said he started the site as an antidote to mainstream social media sites that he believes are too liberal.
During an interview with Mastriano posted on Gab on May 2, Torba warned Mastriano that he would likely be criticized for agreeing to be interviewed on Gab. "You may even get called a smear for doing this interview with me. So brace yourself for that,” Torba told Mastriano.
Mastriano expressed no reservations during the 16-minute interview about the content on Gab and thanked Torba for providing a space for conservative voices like his own. Mastriano has routinely declined interviews with mainstream media outlets and has barred some media from some campaign events.
Mastriano has posted 66 times on Gab since he joined it in February. A recent post on July 9 — a criticism of Democratic economic policies — received 157 comments. At least two dozen of those responses — the most common response by far — were antisemitic insults about state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate in the race for governor. Shapiro is Jewish.
The response to the post is typical of Gab content, according to a number of media reports and academic studies about the site. Although the site’s founder says its purpose is to provide a haven for free speech, in practice that has meant the site often has been dominated by conspiracy theories and hate speech.
Torba himself has openly promoted white nationalist content and conspiracies on Gab, according to a New York Times report. After the recent mass shooting in Buffalo where a gunman targeted Black shoppers at a supermarket, Torba encouraged Gab members to marry and have babies only with other white people. Gab has actively courted Qanon supporters.
And of course Shapiro hit Mastriano on this:
Will Simmons, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said in an emailed statement that the affiliation with Gab is typical of Mastriano’s extremism. Mastriano has voiced support for unproven claims about election fraud and attended the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, though he stayed behind police lines and did not enter the Capitol during the riot.
“Doug Mastriano has proven again that he is unfit to be governor by bankrolling and accepting the endorsement of the hateful organization that empowered the Tree of Life shooter to spread antisemitic, white nationalist rhetoric before murdering 11 Jewish people in Pittsburgh,” Simmons wrote.
The Shapiro campaign didn’t respond to questions about whether it is taking precautions because of the antisemitic content posted about him on Gab.
But Pittsburgh attorney Steve Irwin, who recently lost a close primary for the Democratic nomination in the 12th Congressional District, said he’s worried that Mastriano’s relationship with Gab could have unintended consequences. Irwin, who has served in leadership roles for the Anti-Defamation League and is Jewish, said he believes Mastriano thinks he needs extremist voters to win.
“And frankly, he embraces it and he leans into it. He realizes that’s what he’s got to do, and he’s doing it. And this is, it’s just unconscionable,” Irwin said.
At least there are some decent Republicans in Pennsylvania left who won’t be supporting this piece of shit:
A political committee with connections to the Never Trump movement and to a high-profile neoconservative, will dip into Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, “playing heavily” — its political director said — to convince college-educated suburban voters to buck Republican Doug Mastriano.
The Republican Accountability PAC is putting $2 million behind a campaign in Pennsylvania to convince voters — those who may have broken with Donald Trump in 2020, especially — that they should do the same with Mr. Mastriano, the GOP state senator who is up against Democrat Josh Shapiro in the November election.
The effort from the Washington-based committee is taking the name “Republican Voters Against Mastriano,” and went up with a six-figure TV ad campaign this week across the commonwealth that features personal testimonies from Republican voters who say Mr. Mastriano is unfit to govern and too extreme.
The PAC exists in a network of organizations, messengers and think tanks that sprouted after Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, which united a number of conservatives who decried the direction that their party was headed.
Also:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano will have to fend off attacks from many Democratic groups on the way to November and he can now add a GOP-backed political action committee to the list.
Coming just days after nine Pennsylvania Republican leaders endorsed Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, a group of centrist Republicans with deep roots in state government and politics have formed a PAC opposing Mastriano, a state senator from Franklin County.
“There’s a long history of Pennsylvania Republicans being from what I guess people call the moderate part of the party,” said Craig Snyder, the architect of Republicans4Shapiro and a former chief of staff for the late centrist Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.
“All of a sudden, we have a nominee that is really far outside of that history, really far outside of that norm,” Snyder told PennLive.
“I’m not here to praise Shapiro. I’m also not here to criticize Shapiro. I think Shapiro would be an effective, mainstream governor of Pennsylvania, but do I think he’s the new Abraham Lincoln? No,” Snyder said. “The real issue is stopping an unacceptable choice, which is Mastriano.”
Snyder, who briefly ran for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination, has brought on former GOP U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood of Bucks County as chairman of Republicans4Shapiro, which is seeking 30-second videos from like-minded Republicans explaining their opposition to Mastriano to be part of online ads.
“What we’re going to do is really tightly target the persuadable Republican and independent voters,” Snyder said. “We’re going to say, ‘There’s this one thing that is unacceptable and here’s why.’”
Greenwood spearheaded a similar effort in 2020 to oppose former President Donald Trump and he was also one of the nine Republicans who publicly endorsed Shapiro last week.
“Donald Trump and Mastriano are way beyond what the Republican Party is supposed to stand for,” said Greenwood, who called Shapiro “a sane, commonsense, well-thought of public servant.”
Greenwood said he will be hosting a fundraiser for Shapiro in September that he hopes will raise $100,000.
Former acting Pennsylvania Attorney General Walter Cohen and his wife, Susan, the former executive director of the state House Joint Bipartisan Committee, are involved in the PAC and have already co-hosted a fundraiser that raised $80,000 for Shapiro in Carlisle.
Other members of Republicans4Shapiro listed on its website include former Murray Dickman, Secretary of Administration under former Republican Gov. Dick Thornburgh and an official at the U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush; Bob Wilburn, a former secretary of education, and budget and administration under Thornburgh; former state legislator, Common Pleas judge and Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler; George Grode, who served as state insurance commission under Thornburgh; former state senator and Lt. Gov. Bob Jubelirer; James Seif, the former secretary of environmental protection under former Republican Gov. Tom Ridge; and Joe Conti, a former state House and Senate member; and Republican fundraiser Bill Sasso.
By the way, Shapiro is going to make an excellent Governor because he already is a terrific Attorney General. Here’s a great example:
A tiny borough in northern Pennsylvania broke the law when it hired the police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
In a letter to Tioga Borough President Steve Hazlett and obtained by The Inquirer, Shapiro said the town failed to conduct a background check on Timothy Loehmann that was required by Act 57, a law that created a database to track police misconduct and guide hiring for law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania.
“Records show that this check was not performed when Tioga Borough hired Loehmann,” Shapiro wrote. “To be clear, failure to thoroughly check a potential hire’s background, including searching the database for any past disciplinary activities, is a violation of state law.”
The letter was also sent to the Pennsylvania State Police commissioner, Col. Robert Evanchick.
Loehmann, who killed Tamir in November 2014 while a member of the Cleveland Division of Police, was hired as Tioga’s lone police officer last week. He withdrew his application two days later due to widespread outrage from Tioga residents, Mayor David Wilcox, and others, including Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother.
“He shouldn’t be a police officer anywhere in the United States,” Rice told the Washington Post. “I’m actually shocked that anybody would give him a job knowing what he has done to my family.”
There’s also this:
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has joined 19 other state attorneys general in supporting a Biden administration effort to tighten regulations on so-called “ghost guns.” In an amicus brief filed last week, the officials asked a federal judge in Texas to reject a challenge to the new restrictions set to take effect in August.
“For years, convicted felons, violent drug dealers, have all been able to buy these guns at gun shows without a background check,” Shapiro said in a statement Monday. “With these new federal regulations, we are making it harder for gun kits to end up in the hands of criminals and easier for law enforcement to track crime guns in their investigations. All this helps make Pennsylvania communities safer.”
Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, will face Republican Doug Mastriano, a strong opponent of gun control, in the November election.
And:
Attorney General Josh Shapiro just won the endorsement of Philadelphia’s firefighters’ union.
It’s not his first organized labor endorsement and likely won’t be the last, but this one is slightly unusual: two of the firefighters’ most recent endorsements went to Republicans, former President Donald Trump and far-right U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Barnette.
But Chuck McQuilkin, who serves as vice president for the Philadelphia Firefighters’ and Paramedics’ Union Local 22, said this decision was easy.
Shapiro’s opponent, GOP state Sen. Doug Mastriano, kicked off his general election campaign with a primary victory speech that “made it clear that the days of the unions having any kind of say in the state are over, day one,” McQuilkin said. “To me, right there, that’s all you need to know.”
The union represents around 4,500 firefighters, paramedics, EMT’s and officers — both active and retired, and a 10-member executive board makes the unit’s endorsements. McQuilkin noted that they’ve been divided in the past over endorsement politics, but in this particular race, it was mostly about policy.
More than a president or U.S. senator, the governor has a lot of direct power over labor law, and there’s one law the firefighters care about above all: Act 111.
Pennsylvania bars emergency responders from striking, but Act 111 gives police and fire unions additional rights in return. They can collectively bargain with the state or their municipality over things like salaries, benefits, and internal discipline through binding arbitration, with disputes decided by a board that includes a member chosen by the police or firefighters. The process can make it easier to lobby for better wages, or contest a firing and protect someone’s job.
Over in the Senate race:
Celebrity doctor and Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz has plenty of personal wealth to help fund his upstart campaign. And while the TV doctor might be a political neophyte, his fundraising operation has incorporated a sophisticated technique—what one expert described as “legalized money laundering.”
Like so many aspects of today’s campaign finance system, it traces back a decade—to the Supreme Court’s watershed Citizens United decision.
The Oz setup involves a somewhat confusing super PAC, which has a “dark money” nonprofit twin. The super PAC has raised more than $4 million, including a donation from the nonprofit.
That pairing was made possible thanks to Citizens United, which gave rise to super PACs—political committees that can raise unlimited amounts of money.
Brett Kappel, campaign finance specialist at Harmon Curran, explained the arrangement.
“The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowed corporations, including nonprofit organizations, to make unlimited contributions to Super PACs, which then could spend those funds on independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates,” Kappel said.
Also:
Television personality Mehmet Oz spent months in a Pennsylvania Senate race touting a history of hunting in Florida. But the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has confirmed Oz never had a license to hunt in the Sunshine State legally.
The vast majority of property Oz owns in Florida remains unsuitable for hunting.
It’s legal to do some hunting without a license, but the state limits what and where to hunt game. The absence of a Florida license for hunting indicates Oz’s sporting activities may have run afoul of legal requirements, or they were more limited than the Republican candidate asserted during his Primary campaign.
Videos through the campaign showed Oz in a different setting than the one seen by talk show viewers. An April ad started with a close-up of Oz’s hands as he loaded and cocked a double-barrel shotgun and later fired a pistol. He discusses hunting as a child with his father and doing the same now with his son.
“When people say I won’t support guns, they’re dead wrong,” he says before firing a shell at a clay skeet.
Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D. PA) doesn’t need to rely on dark money:
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s (D) Senate campaign on Tuesday announced that it had raised $11 million in the second fundraising quarter of 2022.
His campaign noted that it was the largest sum of money that Fetterman or any Pennsylvania candidate had received for one fundraising quarter. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, finished off the latest quarter with close to $5.5 million cash on hand.
The campaign received more than 358,000 donations for the second quarter, and the average campaign donation was just under $30. Out of the more than 358,000 donations Fetterman’s campaign received, more than 139,000 came from first-time donors. More than 200,000 came from unique donors overall.
“I truly cannot thank all of our supporters enough,” Fetterman said in a statement. “The outpouring of support for our campaign since we became Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee has just been extraordinary. We’re well on our way to flipping this seat in November with your help. To date in our campaign, we’ve received donations from over 109,000 donors in Pennsylvania.”
And constantly reminding voters about this:
It was The Donald who decided to tell his acolytes to vote for Oz in the Pennsylvania Republican primary – despite the fact the TV doctor is from New Jersey, Cliffside Park to be specific.
With Trump’s support, Oz won the GOP primary over David McCormick, a solid conservative who was born and grew up in the heartland of Pennsylvania. But even with Trump’s backing, Oz won by a mere 951 votes.
Fetterman, the sitting lieutenant governor who is known for his sense of humor, immediately went on the attack.
“Do want someone who’s all about North Jersey? He’s not one of us” he asks in one attack ad.
Another ad shows footage of an Oz campaign ad in which the celebrity doctor stands in front of a bookcase as he calls for the Philadelphia mayor to resign amid a crime wave there. Other footage shows the bookcase is in Oz’s Cliffside Park crib.
“Pro tip: don’t film an ad for your PA senate campaign from your mansion in New Jersey,” Fetterman says in the ad.
The Democrat also hired a plane to fly over the Jersey Shore on the July 4 weekend with a banner reading, “”HEY DR. OZ, WELCOME HOME TO NJ! ❤️ JOHN.”
Oz claims Pennsylvania residence through his wife’s family’s home in Huntingdon Valley in Montgomery County. But one of Fetterman’s supporters posted Oz’s Statement of Candidacy listing his residence as “Huntington Valley.”
“Mehmet Oz MISSPELLED the name of the Pennsylvania city he claims to reside in,” the supporter added.
While also running on the issues. Here’s a section from Fetterman’s op-ed in Go Erie:
But inflation isn't only impacting us at the pump. It's everywhere. So it's not just energy we should be making here at home. It's everything.
More American energy, more American manufacturing, more American goods. And more American jobs.
We should be ramping up production across industries, increasing capacity and supply to bring down prices across the board.
Making more stuff here in America would mean prices wouldn't spike every time there's a problem overseas. We don't need to be outsourcing any more jobs and production to China. And we don't need to be shouldering the burden when other countries enter into conflicts or declare deranged wars, like Russia's Putin did in Ukraine, which contributed to prices skyrocketing.
We can use American energy to drive down prices at the gas pump for American workers. And we can use American workers to drive down the price of everything, for everyone.
This isn't a radical proposal. It's basic common sense.
Pennsylvania's workers can compete with anyone in the world. We can do it all right here: drive down prices, create good-paying union jobs, and finally stop our dependence on foreign sources of energy and production.
FYI:
Health and Democracy are on the ballot this year and we need to get ready to keep Pennsylvania Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Fetterman, Shapiro and these Pennsylvania Democrats campaigns: