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Leading GOP candidates in Pennsylvania were in Washington on Jan. 6


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SOURCE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/15/leading-gop-candidates-pennsylvania-were-washington-jan-6/
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Summary

— A top candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary — endorsed Saturday by former president Donald Trump — participated in the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, the day the U.S. Capitol was attacked.So, too, did a surging candidate for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.And so did one of the Republican contenders to be the state’s lieutenant governor.The trio are part of a phalanx of Republican candidates nationwide who so strongly embraced Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him that they traveled to Washington to participate in the rally that preceded the violent attack on the Capitol, temporarily disrupting congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory.Most of the candidates, including the Pennsylvanians, have said they did not enter the Capitol building that day. U.S. Senate candidate Ron Hanks, a Republican state representative, and J.R. Majewski, who this month won the GOP nomination to challenge an Ohio Democrat in a swing congressional district, have also said they were there.When a pro-Trump group recently surveyed candidates for local and statewide office in Michigan about their activities on Jan. 6, 13 of them responded they had been in Washington.“I was there PROUDLY standing for freedom of speech and election in integrity,” wrote Audra Johnson, a candidate for Congress.“I believe [Jan. 6] was a set up by the Democrats and [Republicans-in-name-only] to make President Trump and his supporters look bad,” wrote Diane Saber, a candidate for state representative, adding: “Yes I was there.”In Pennsylvania, Mastriano was a key voice in the effort to overturn Biden’s more than 80,000-vote victory in the state. Mastriano positioned himself early on as a staunchly pro-Trump candidate fighting covid restrictions and promising to audit the 2020 election, stances that appeared to help him gain favor in a nine-person gubernatorial primary field.Now, with days to go before the vote, some of those candidates are dropping out and coalescing around former congressman Lou Barletta in an effort to block Mastriano.Barnette, who has aligned herself with Mastriano, has recently broken into the top tier in GOP Senate polls as businessman David McCormick and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz have focused on attacking each other.Trump endorsed Oz, but at a recent sparsely attended rally in western Pennsylvania, some of the former president’s fans booed the candidate and turned their back to him when he spoke.Charlie Gerow, a longtime GOP operative in Pennsylvania and one of the candidates for governor, said Jan. 6 is going to be a major issue in the general election if Mastriano and Barnette prevail.“They’ll have to explain their actions and their whereabouts and have to do it early,” Gerow said.Robert Gleason, former chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, said the pair would struggle in a general election because “a lot of people have moved on, they’ve accepted that [Trump] lost, Joe Biden is president, we’re not going to revote, we’re not going to re-litigate … They need to get over that or it will be detrimental to the party.”Hours after his endorsement from Trump, Mastriano held a joint rally with Barnette Saturday in the Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks County. For me this is no game.”Outside Mastriano’s rally Saturday, voter Anmoreen Monaghan, 55, said the 2020 election was “110 percent” a crucial issue for her and that Mastriano was “the only person who had the guts to stand up.”Attorney General Josh Shapiro, running unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor, tweeted Saturday that Trump had endorsed “the most extreme and dangerous GOP candidate.”“It’s time to get off the sidelines … democracy is on the line,” he added.David Becker, the director for the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was more secure than others that had come before, including Trump’s 44,000-vote victory in 2016.Becker said Pennsylvania’s governor has more power over elections than in other states, making this year’s choice especially consequential for the vote in 2024.“If it’s someone who believes lies about the election, who wants to continue to undermine the integrity of Pennsylvania elections by claiming falsehoods, it could have a disastrous affect on access for Pennsylvania voters, as well as the overall integrity of the election system,” he said.Mastriano did not respond to a voice mail or an email sent through his campaign website.Barnette, too, was an important advocate for overturning the Pennsylvania vote.

As said here by Colby Itkowitz, Rosalind S. Helderman