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Doug Mastriano’s Snowflake Strategy

After crashing through a G.O.P. primary, Mastriano’s fringey brand of Q-inflected, hyper-MAGA politics has been a harder sell with general election voters. The Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate hasn’t made things easier by insulating himself from the very media outlets he needs to win.

Doug Mastriano
Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, might be the purest of MAGA true believers. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Tina Nguyen
September 14, 2022

Among the more fringe candidates who muscled their way onto the sputtering G.O.P. rocket ship this year, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, might be the purest of MAGA true believers: an election-denying, vaccine-dismissing, QAnon-espousing, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and Confederate cosplayer. As Larry Ceisler, a Philly-based political communications strategist told me about Mastriano, “He truly believes that God is talking to him. And God wants him to run MAGA.” Ceisler is a Democrat, but he’s not wrong: Mastriano led a prayer session on Jan 5., 2021, calling on God to help Trump “seize the power.” The next day, he marched on the Capitol.