Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano is running a close race with former Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA), in the Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial primary.
While Barletta has racked up a number of high-profile endorsements, Republicans across Pennsylvania have voiced concerns with Mastriano’s record and electability. Mastriano faces seven issues heading into the May 17 election.
1. Mastriano is Democrat Josh Shapiro’s Preferred Candidate to Run Against
The Republican who wins the gubernatorial primary will face Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) in November’s general election. In a recent ad, Shapiro suggested that he would prefer to run against Mastriano, whom he seemingly views as a weaker opponent than Barletta.
In the ad, Shapiro sought to closely align Mastriano to former President Trump despite the president not having endorsed a candidate in the race.
“Pennsylvania Republicans don’t want Democrat Josh Shapiro picking their candidate for governor,” a GOP operative told Breitbart News. “Josh Shapiro is helping Doug Mastriano more than he has done for himself in an entire year.”
Mastriano admitted to local media that the Shapiro ad is helping him in the race.
2. Pennsylvania Swing Voters Suggest They’ll Vote for Shapiro Over Mastriano
Last week, Osage Research released a poll of the state’s swing voters. The poll found that 42 percent of swing voters said they want to vote for a Republican for governor over a Democrat in the general election while 39 percent said they prefer a Democrat.
With that preference, though, 49 percent of swing voters said they would vote for Shapiro over 41 percent who said they would back Mastriano in an election between the two candidates. Pollsters noted:
Mastriano’s image is already upside down with swing voters with only 16 percent having a favorable opinion of Mastriano while already 22 percent have an unfavorable opinion. After voters are informed about key messages on Mastriano and Shapiro, Shapiro jumps out to a 12-point lead and Shapiro pushes over 50% percent.
3. Mastriano Fractures Pennsylvania Republican Party
Across Pennsylvania, insiders from the state’s Republican Party are worried that a Mastriano candidacy against Shapiro will cost them more than just the governor’s race but also state legislative seats as well.
“We’re in a year where all evidence points to a red tsunami. And it appears here in Pennsylvania, because of the number of people in the race and his smaller but consistent base of support, we may be nominating the only Republican who would be unelectable in November,” Allegheny County Republican Party Chair Sam DeMarco told Politico.
“As National Committeeman, I have spoken regularly with almost all of the gubernatorial campaigns over the past [three] months,” Andy Reilly told Politico:
Last week when the presumptive [Democratic] nominee, Josh Shapiro, and the State Democratic Party used campaign resources to assist the candidacy of Doug Mastriano in the Republican primary, it raised concerns among the campaigns. Those concerns have led to discussions among the campaigns of which I have been occasionally involved. [Emphasis added]
One GOP insider said operatives in the state’s Republican Party are all “losing their minds.”
4. Mastriano’s Record on Chinese Coronavirus Restrictions
In March 2020, just as the Chinese coronavirus gripped the United States, Mastriano suggested rolling back medical privacy laws for Americans, writing in a document that “existing HIPAA regulations are threatening the lives of our citizens…”
Mastriano then introduced a plan that requested the federal government to suspend medical privacy for Americans to “allow for full disclosure of details that are currently considered private, and are not disclosed to the public.” The plan would have kept a public record of every American who tested positive for coronavirus.
In a March 19, 2020 letter to Trump, Mastriano begged the administration to suspend HIPAA laws, writing that “existing federal law prevents the sharing of names of COVID-19 persons, and this endangers the lives of those who come in close contact with them.”
5. Potential Campaign Finance Violations by Mastriano Campaign
As far back as December 2021, Mastriano’s campaign finances have raised alarms. Critics accused Mastriano, at the time, of violating campaign finance laws by not having officially declared a run for governor while soliciting donations through groups supporting him.
A few months ago, the Philadelphia Inquirerconfirmed Mastriano has not reported the donations and fundraising costs associated with events last year on his financial report:
But no costs associated with those events show up on Mastriano’s 2021 financial report, which was made public this month. In fact, he didn’t report spending much of anything last year. The filing shows just one expenditure, recorded last January — $14,415.87 on processing fees for an online fund-raising service. [Emphasis added]
…
Mastriano didn’t report any such expenditures. [Emphasis added]
Nor did he report spending on a large billboard on a Chambersburg highway touting his campaign. The sign, reported by Breitbart, says it was paid for by Friends of Doug Mastriano. [Emphasis added]
6. Mastriano’s Record of Supporting Voting Law that Helped Spur 2020 Election Issues
In 2019, as a state senator, Mastriano joined his Republican colleagues in passing Act 77, which Gov. Tom Wolf (D) signed into law ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The law abolished straight-ticket voting in Pennsylvania, where a voter can check a one-party box, while expanding no-excuse absentee voting across the state.
Last year, when Breitbart News asked Mastriano about Act 77, he called it a “comprehensive voting reform package” in its original form.
“There were no red flags as evidenced that every Republican in the Senate supported it, even those of us who are routinely a ‘no’ vote on anything that could undermine our freedoms,” Mastriano said. “And the near-unanimous Democrat opposition to this bill highlights that in its original form, there was no insidious risk.”
7. Mastriano’s Smears Against Breitbart News
In December 2021, following a report published by Breitbart News noting questions surrounding Mastriano’s campaign finances, the retired U.S. Army Colonel took to local talk radio to smear Breitbart News, Hannah Bleau, the reporter who wrote the piece, and her Christian faith.
“… shame on her,” Mastriano said. “She professes on her Twitter page to be a Christian. If that is so, I can’t judge her heart here … that girl is very questionable and she is compromising her integrity.”
Mastriano then accused Breitbart News of sending a request for comment to his campaign two to three hours before publishing the report regarding the campaign finance concerns.
After reviewing the communications, Breitbart News reported that a request for comment had been sent to Mastriano’s communications director, Joshua Hermann, who responded to the request within hours with a statement.
That statement was included, in full, in the report and the report was not published until a week later, indicating that Mastriano’s claims that he was blindsided by Breitbart News are inaccurate.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Three graduating cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy who refused to take part in the experimental clot shot will not be commissioned as military officers but will graduate with bachelor’s degrees, according to the academy.
In a statement released to AP, Academy spokesman Dean Miller said that the three cadets will get a degree, but “they will not be commissioned into the United States Air Force as long as they remain unvaccinated.”
Miller added that the secretary of the Air Force will decide whether to require the three cadets to reimburse the United States for education costs in lieu of service.
It was previously announced that four cadets might not graduate or be commissioned as military officers after refusing the Covid vaccine. However, a week ago, one cadet had a change of heart and decided to get vaccinated and will graduate and become an Air Force officer.
As of Saturday, the Air Force is the only military academy, so far, where cadets are not being commissioned due to vaccine refusal. All of the more than 1,000 Army cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduated and were commissioned as officers earlier in the day and all were vaccinated.
The Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, said Saturday that none of the Navy or Marine Corps seniors there are being prevented from commissioning due to vaccine refusals. That graduation is later this week, and the Air Force ceremony is Wednesday in Colorado. Ahead of that ceremony, the U.S. Air Force Academy Board conducted its standard review of whether this year’s class had met all graduation requirements on Friday.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is the scheduled speaker at the Air Force graduation, last year made the COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for service members, including those at the military academies, saying the vaccine is critical to maintaining military readiness and the health of the force.
Military leaders have argued that troops for decades have been required to get as many as 17 vaccines in order to maintain the health of the force, particularly those deploying overseas. Students arriving at the military academies get a regimen of shots on their first day — such as measles, mumps and rubella – if they aren’t already vaccinated. And they routinely get flu shots in the fall.
Last year, The Gateway Pundit reported a similar incident of three cadets who chose to leave West Point rather than take the COVID vaccine. As a result, they were coerced, abused, and discriminated against.
The three cadets who left the academy released an exclusive statement to the Gateway Pundit last year.
“As this tyranny continued through the spring of 2021, I began to self-reflect. Did I want to give up the next 10 years of my life to an organization that so openly wanted to demolish my personal will? Could I in good faith serve people who blindly believed in identity politics and fake science? I was so uncomfortable with my situation and the politics unnecessarily injected that I decided to leave West Point.” Willow Brown, left spring 2021
“Even if my vaccine exemption request had been accepted, I left West Point because the Army is no longer an organization that I believe I can serve in. Unfortunately, serving my country and serving in the Army don’t seem to be so similar anymore.” Hannah MacDonald, left Oct. 2021
“I wanted to dedicate my life to protecting the freedoms of American citizens and defending the U.S. Constitution as an officer, but I was having my freedom to choose and my bodily autonomy taken away. The Army I thought I knew had completely betrayed my rights and their doctrine of “the citizen soldier.’”Nickaylah Sampson, left Oct. 2021
As TGP’s Kristinn Taylor reported earlier this month, Comedian Dave Chappelle was attacked on stage during a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles earlier this month. Chappelle was performing for the Netflix Is a Joke Fest.
The attacker rushed the stage during the performance and lunged at Chappelle in an effort to take him down.
The attacker was carrying a knife shaped like a gun in his pack when he attacked Chappelle. The Soros-backed Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón did not bring felony charges against the knife-wielding man following the attack. However, authorities were able to link Isaiah Lee to a stabbing crime in December following his violent attack on Dave Chappelle.
On Monday Isaiah Lee said he was inspired by Will Smith “standing up for his wife” and slapping Chris Rock at the Oscar Awards.
Actor Will Smith slapped Rock then sat down and screamed threats from his seat in the audience. It was a memorable moment for the Hollywood elites. And Will Smith was never charged with assault for his attack watched by millions of viewers on live television.
The man who attacked comedian Dave Chappelle on stage earlier this month said he was inspired by Will Smith ‘standing up for’ his wife’ after he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars.
In a strange turn of events, the man who attacked Chappelle was also charged with murder in an unrelated case this week.
When he attacked Chappelle, he was carrying a replica handgun with a blade hidden inside of it, according to the authorities who arrested him.
He sat down for an interview with the New York Post and explained why he attacked Chappelle on Monday.
As World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab proclaimed that “the future is built by us” at the opening of the annual Davos gathering, two other European elites declared that the global energy crisis is a “transition” that will be “painful” for most, but should not be resisted by nations tempted to preserve their own sovereignty over the “global agenda.”
Schwab called those summoned before him a “powerful community,” and declared “We have the means to improve the state of the world, but two conditions are necessary: The first one, is that we act all as stakeholders of larger communities, so that we serve not only our self-interests but we serve the community. That’s what we call ‘stakeholder responsibility.’”
“And second, that we collaborate,” he continued, adding “And this is the reason why you find many opportunities here during the meeting to engage into… action and impact initiatives to make progress related to specific issues on the global agenda.”
As further discussions progressed Monday, German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck spoke about the energy crisis, warning that governments of individual nations should not seek to protect their own citizens, but instead follow “the rule of the markets”.
In other words, countries need to fall into line with the globalists’ ‘Great Reset’ agenda:
During a World Economic Forum panel on the energy crisis, German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck said countries should resist temptation to look after their own interests first. He added sustainability requires change to the “rule of the markets.” pic.twitter.com/BYzQqMRDbk
During another discussion, Norwegian finance CEO Kjerstin Braathen described global energy upheaval as a “transition” while admitting there will be mass shortages and economic hardship, but claiming the “pain” is “worth it.”
Speaking about small and medium businesses in Davos, Norwegian finance CEO Kjerstin Braathen says energy transition will create energy shortages and inflationary pressures, but this “pain” is “worth it.” pic.twitter.com/Ne70lRle5W
Journalist Andrew Lawton documented more of Davos cabal drooling over the possibilities for global control that their Great Reset could engender:
Alibaba Group president J. Michael Evans boasts at the World Economic Forum about the development of an “individual carbon footprint tracker” to monitor what you buy, what you eat, and where/how you travel. pic.twitter.com/sisSrUngDI
On the World Economic Forum’s panel on a “Reimagined Global Tax System,” Oxfam executive director Gabriela Bucher calls for a global 25 per cent corporate tax rate and complains that countries are lowering taxes to be competitive. pic.twitter.com/zuJqsdXlUM
Australian eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant tells the World Economic Forum we need a “recalibration” of freedom of speech. pic.twitter.com/zEq72wFhNf
A CNN anchor, the chairman of Credit Suisse, and France’s top central banker giddily discuss the arrival of central bank digital currencies within five years at the World Economic Forum in Davos. pic.twitter.com/nKPN2qRUI3
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