From voting Social media to the next campaign logo To publish the image of children collected by AI gathered around Graffiti “Doug 4 Gov” on his account X, State. Senator Doug Mastriano was not shy on the internet about his interest in applying for the governor of Pennsylvania.
Mastriano (R., Franklin), who lost in 2022 from Governor Josh Shapiro by almost 15 percentage points and 800,000 votes, said in an interview with Inquirer on Friday that he is close to the 2026 Governor race. And, as Mastriano said, he will not be discouraged by running people from GOP who plan to support the race in September, 15 months before universal elections and about eight months before the base. The state GOP probably supports the treasurer Stacy Garrita, who is to announce its offer for the governor in the next few weeks, and powerful trade unions that previously supported her for the treasurer appeared against her.
»Read more: Stacy Garrity did not even enter the race to Pa. The governor, and Jabs are already flying
The right senator from Gettysburg said that he did not make the final decision whether he would run for the governor next year and make a selection in Tandem with his wife Rebbie.
“I will announce on my time axis, not according to the pressure of people from the party who want to quit support,” said Mastriano in a statement. “The future of our movement will not be dictated by outside people. The people will be conducted.”
However, the 61 -year -old Mastriano has accelerated his clue online in recent weeks about the next governorate offer. Last week he published a potential logo of the campaign, which, as he said, his observers X chose as their favorite, containing his name and symbol Keystone filled with the American flag. “Here is a choice of people,” he wrote.
He often transforms posts from X users, encouraging him to escape, or his previous support during the 2022 race, including President Donald Trump and now the FBI director Kasha Patel. Politico later announced that Trump regretted that he had supported Mastriano, and the president said at the beginning of this year that he would support the American representative Dan Meuser if he was candidate for the governor before Meuser finally refused to escape.
In a written statement before an interview with Inquirer Mastriano, he wrote that “I have a plan” to defeat Shapiro in 2026, noting that the deceased Governor Bob Casey Sr. He ran four times for the governor before winning in 1996.
“Now the fact that he is put on the back, stop complaining, complaining and twisting your hands, and this time she was helpful,” Mastriano said in an interview.
He added that from the outside, the GOP “risk the loss of the grassroots movement that we developed” through the resistance to the closures of Covid-19 and “efforts of voting integrity” in 2020, when Mastriano called for examination of unjustified claims for election fraud in Pennsylvania.
Interest in Mastriano with another governorate offer complicates things for the state establishment of GOP, which tried to connect around Garrita as the best shot in questioning the extremely popular Shapiro in 2026. Garrity also formally announced her candidacy for the governor. No candidate formally announced his candidacy for the governor, and Shapiro himself still has to announce a re -election campaign.
According to the Republican party, they are afraid that they will not be able to stop Mastriano from winning the main, if he enters the race, potentially injury to Ballot candidates, such as the behavior of two GOP congress pickups in 2024 elections.
Jim Worthington, the owner of Election Trump Elector and Bucks County Fitness, called Mastriano “a good guy” who has the right to run, but said that he and other party leaders are worried about their candidacy.
“Doug Mastriano would be a death sentence because not only the governor’s race, but also would hurt us so much in maintaining [GOP-held] Congress, said Worthington.
“People must speak, not in the way they attack the guy,” he added. “He has the right to do what he wants, but I have the right to say that it would be terrible for our party.”
Another outstanding GOP leader in a state who did not want to criticize his party, said that at this stage he is not very confident, that every GOP candidate can beat Shapiro, but the faster the party can connect around a candidate such as GarriTy, who, as in his opinion, had a better shot, the harder it will be to work to avoid losses down.
Mastriano called these fears “absolute total nonsense.” In 2022, he assigned his lack of performance in the absence of GOP not accepting early voting and redistribution. Now he said that he was ready to place his bottom -up supporters to make more GOP voters to use early personal vote and post voting as Democrats since 2020.
“I will not start until I believe I can win,” added Mastriano.
He said that people from GOP were not afraid of the next Mastriano race, they did not express their fears the Mastriano.
“None of the outside people had the courage to talk to me directly,” he said. “Everything I hear from outside and outside people is an encouragement to run.”
He added that the promise of supporting the candidate in September – more than 15 months before the universal elections – “deprives people of people.”
Mastriano also raised the idea of running from Garrita, because both are retired colonels of the American army and have several overlapping grassroots supporters. She did not comment on the idea in public.
If Trump considers the race again, Mastriano said he would hear his decision, noting that the president is “the greatest factor in every race.”
But Mastriano remains sure of its supporters, who in 2022 collected historical 29,000 signatures to vote, adding that they are “dynamic and ready battles in every Pennsylvania unit.”
“We have bottom -up. They stay with Rebbie and I,” added Mastriano. “We fought the fight when no one else appeared.”
