Far-right election denier Mastriano wins GOP race for governor in Pennsylvania

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a far-right Republican who built a large following seeking to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, is the GOP nominee for governor, NBC News projected Tuesday. After 10:30 p.m. ET, Mastriano led his rivals by more than 20 points. He'll face Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, who ran unopposed, in November. Should Mastriano, who received former President Donald Trump's last-minute backing Saturday, prevail in the general election, he would be able to appoint a secretary of state to oversee elections. He has pledged that his choice would “reset” the state’s voter rolls so everyone would “have to re-register.” Mastriano's winning campaign message wove together Christian nationalism, election denialism and a rejection of Covid mitigation policies. A number of Republicans have expressed concern that he is too extreme to beat Shapiro in November, with some state GOP leaders working behind the scenes in the past week to consolidate a large field around another candidate in hope of uniting the non-Mastriano vote.

In a speech at his election night rally, Mastriano said his campaign "has no place for hate, bigotry and intolerance," adding that his movement is "under siege" from opponents and members of the media who don't "like groups of us who believe certain things, and they paint us in these awful descriptives." “Everyone in this room can believe whatever they want, and they should not be mocked for that," he said. "And that includes us on the Republican side. And I will not stand for you mocking, you know, me, my wife, my family or what we believe or anyone in this room here. This is America." State Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman and former Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Pa., bowed out of the race and endorsed former Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa. Other contenders, including businessman Dave White and former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, remained in the race. “It’s just one of those things where it seems very clear that there’s two candidates, that the polls have been very consistent on who the candidates are,” David La Torre, a former Corman adviser who supported Barletta after Corman ended his candidacy, said before the polls closed. “But you know, for some reason, people make their own decisions to stay in races, despite the math.”