‘A lone wolf,’ Mastriano rips up traditional campaign script in Pennsylvania
Four weeks since securing the Republican nomination for governor, Doug Mastriano hasn’t planned a unity event to bring his former rivals together.
He hasn’t unfurled a laundry list of endorsements from GOP elected officials, as is fairly customary for a newly minted nominee who emerged from a competitive primary with a handful of opponents.
His campaign is largely ignoring national media requests. (Spokespeople declined to respond to questions for this story.) And the candidate himself has been slow to connect with people who want to be helpful, according to those who have tried to reach him.
“I haven’t heard from Doug. Last we spoke was Election Night,” said Lou Barletta, the former congressman and second place finisher in the May 17 primary who is supporting Mastriano but hasn’t been asked to campaign for him.
Dave White, another former Mastriano opponent, has no plans to be involved in campaigning for Mastriano, though he supports his candidacy, said a White spokesperson.
Mastriano, a retired Army colonel who won a state Senate seat in 2019, is doing it his own way.
He’s employing a drastically different approach to his gubernatorial bid, which doubles down on his base, favors social media over mainstream news outlets he views as hostile and sticks with the same team of loyalists that helped get him to this point.
No ‘traditional script’
On Monday, he announced that former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, a strong supporter of Mastriano during the primary, would serve as his own legal counselor.
It’s an unorthodox strategy that’s viewed skeptically by traditional political consultants but can’t altogether be dismissed given the polarization of media outlets and the proliferation of unique channels available to reach people.
“I would be very surprised to see Doug Mastriano follow any traditional script,” said Lowman Henry, chairman and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research in Harrisburg.
“He’s sort of following the same playbook that Donald Trump did in 2016 to win Pennsylvania.”
Like Barletta, Charles Gerow, a conservative activist who ran against Mastriano in the primary, said he hasn’t spoken with the nominee since he called to concede to him on primary night.
“I told him point-blank, I said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want to help you, but you’ve got to tell me what it is.’ And I haven’t heard anything since. Nothing,” Gerow said. “He’s kind of a lone wolf in many respects… It is a very, very unusual situation.”
Since cruising to a 24-point victory a month ago, the Mastriano campaign has shunned national media outlets seeking profiles and answers to rudimentary questions. Unlike his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, he hasn’t delivered a public speech to frame the general election. He hasn’t embarked on a statewide tour to portray party unity or asked high-profile Republicans to vouch for him.
Instead, he’s spent a bulk of his time online, doing Facebook Lives with supporters and sympathetic conservative media personalities.
Social media campaigns
Last week, on such a livestream, Mastriano — who has continued to deny that President Joe Biden rightfully won Pennsylvania in 2020 — said he would need 4,000 poll watchers to monitor the November election.
He acknowledged Mehmet Oz as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. “You might disagree with some of his past statements, current statements, he’s the people’s choice,” Mastriano said.
And he continued to confront critiques that he would struggle to win a general election.
“The person who has the best chance winning the general election is the person who won the primary,” he declared, noting he carried 55 of the state’s 67 counties.
The broadcast has attracted about 3,600 views to date.
During a Facebook Live on Monday with Carrie Lewis Delrosso, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, Mastriano said he was still putting together a schedule to visit all 67 of the state’s counties this summer.
“We’ll try to do a rally every month that will usually come at the end of some bus or van tour,” he pledged.
That video has nearly 5,000 views as of Tuesday.
Eric Wilson, who led digital strategy for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, said that Mastriano has likely calculated that a social media first strategy is a smarter use of his time, given the storylines the legacy media are pursuing in covering him.
“The framing of most political journalism is ‘We need to get the contrast, the yes-or-no type questions,’ frequently bringing up topics that aren’t what the candidate is dealing with from voters,” Wilson said. “There’s some frustration there. If this is all about trying to make me look bad, then why would I participate?”
During an early May pre-primary podcast with the Delaware Valley Journal, Mastriano initially praised his hosts as “always fair.” But when the hosts brought up the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Mastriano became audibly angry at a string of straightforward questions.
“My answer is obviously, you didn’t do your research,” Mastriano fumed before apparently hanging up on the hosts.
In sticking to his own social media channels, Mastriano can avoid similar confrontational blow-ups that will earn more scrutiny in the general election.
Will it work?
Wilson pointed to the success of Glenn Youngkin, who won the governorship of Virginia last fall, even as he largely ignored major publications like The Washington Post, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and the state’s Associated Press bureau.
“If (candidates) can get the same reach and have control over the message and reduce (their) exposure, that’s a sound strategy,” Wilson said.
Still, there’s a risk in completely shunning outlets that hold viewerships that provide access to independent and less engaged, persuadable voters that could determine a close election.
Some Republicans say that Mastriano is simply taking some time to make that transition and assume general election footing.
“They need to have him talk to the press, to get those issues out there. They will have that plan,” said Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committeeman from the commonwealth. “He hasn’t even met with the state committee people, that doesn’t happen until July. So there’s time…He’s $16 million behind Shapiro. He’s going to need some interviews and some free media to get that message out there.”
This story was originally published June 14, 2022 at 11:27 AM with the headline "‘A lone wolf,’ Mastriano rips up traditional campaign script in Pennsylvania."
