Josh Shapiro wins in the high-stakes Pennsylvania governor’s race

Josh Shapiro won his bid Tuesday for governor in swing-state Pennsylvania, where he pledged to fend off Republican “extremists” who he said threatened to roll back rights for voting, gay marriage and access to abortion.

The Associated Press had not yet called the race when Shapiro took the stage at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center near Valley Forge National Park in Montgomery County, after 11:25 p.m. The wire service declared him the winner nearly an hour later.

“Real freedom won tonight,” Shapiro told his supporters.

“No matter where you come from, who you love, who you pray to, you are valued here in Pennsylvania, and we hear you. Tonight, you, the good people of Pennsylvania, you won. Opportunity won. A woman’s right to choose won. Your right to organize in Pennsylvania? That won. Your right to vote won. And in the face of all the lies and conspiracies and baseless claims, you also ensured tonight that truth won right here in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

The former Montgomery County commissioner and state attorney general defeated State Sen. Doug Mastriano, of Franklin County, who ran a hard-right campaign that railed against COVID-19 restrictions and “wokeness,” and called trans issues “the sexualization of our children.”

Mastriano did not concede the race. In brief remarks, he told his supporters in Camp Hill: “We’re going to stay here and hang with the people because you guys brought us to this dance, and we’re going to see it to the end.”

His wife, Rebbie Mastriano, said: “God has a plan, and we want to be part of that plan, all of us collectively. And so we call on you to pray and to ask the Lord to intervene.”

Shapiro’s election marks the first time since 1950 the same party has won three consecutive gubernatorial races in the state. State Rep. Austin Davis is to become Pennsylvania’s first Black lieutenant governor.

The 49-year-old Shapiro has spent three decades in government, including work as a Capitol Hill staffer and state representative. As attorney general, he oversaw a 2018 grand jury report on the child sexual abuse committed by more than 300 Catholic clergy. Along with other state attorneys general, he reached a $26 billion settlement for lawsuits against pharmaceutical firms alleging they contributed to the opioid epidemic. He also collaborated with the U.S. Justice Department to end a large mortgage lender’s redlining practices.

Expanding voter rights became a major platform in his campaign. He has said he would support same-day registration, automatic registration when a person gets a driver’s license, and in-person early voting.

After voting Tuesday morning near his home in Abington, Shapiro cast himself as a centrist and unifier.

“I’ve tried to build a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and independents who want to reject dangerous extremism to pull us together to do things that really matter to people,” he said.

Mastriano ran a campaign that hewed far closer to his base and, at times, at odds with the Republican establishment he defeated in the May primary.

At 10 p.m. Tuesday, with the “Rocky” theme playing, Mastriano took the stage in the grand ballroom at the Penn Harris Hotel in Camp Hill and predicted victory.

“We’re going to take this fight all the way to Harrisburg, just across the river,” he said.

Joined by his wife and by State Rep. Carrie DelRosso, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Mastriano thanked his enthusiastic supporters.

“We’re going to change American history right here, right now, this day. It’s going to be fantastic.”

Later, as Fox News called the race for Shapiro, the crowd was subdued.

Mastriano, who has refused to engage with media organizations that were not openly supporting his campaign, began Election Day by retweeting a Philly-area supporter who linked Shapiro to “Draconian” policies enforced by Gov. Tom Wolf to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including school and business closures.

Shapiro and Mastriano spent months criticizing each other but never met face to face in a debate, a breach in the protocol of modern Pennsylvania politics. Shapiro said he was open to a traditional televised debate moderated by members of the media. Mastriano insisted that was a “trap,” and demanded a debate set up by the two campaigns, with each candidate selecting a moderator.

As with everything in this race, Shapiro and Mastriano used two very different models to reach their nominations.

Shapiro presented himself as a bridge-builder, an experienced leader ready to move up in the ranks of state government.

Mastriano campaigned as a champion against “wokeness,” a conservative catchall for culture-war grievances that stretch from education to energy to elections. And Mastriano returned frequently to gender issues, complaining about schools acknowledging the pronouns preferred by students, calling trans issues “the sexualization of our children.”

He also hit Shapiro repeatedly in Philadelphia for rising crime rates while focusing in other parts of the state on rising gas prices and other effects of inflation.

While Shapiro has spoken often of his Jewish faith, saying it motivates him to take action to make a difference in his community, Mastriano and his wife emphasized their evangelical Christianity early and often, telling supporters before he joined the race that they were waiting for a financial sign from God about finding enough support.

Shirley Koontz, an 84-year-old great-grandmother in Chambersburg, part of Mastriano’s Senate district, called Democrats “too liberal and messed up in their minds.” She backed Mastriano, particularly for his antiabortion stance, including his past call to charge people who have the procedure with murder.

“I don’t want them reversing what we just accomplished,” Koontz said, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June overturning Roe v. Wade.

In Springfield, a Republican enclave of Delaware County, Ken Dunbar, 69, rejected his party’s nominee in favor of Shapiro.

“I’m just trying to get somebody in there that’ll do some good and make some sense out of things,” Dunbar said.

Mastriano, who served in the Army for 30 years, plays the disrupter. He lost a 2018 bid for Congress but then won a 2019 special election for a state Senate district in 2019. He won a full term in 2020, the year he worked on behalf of former President Donald Trump to overturn the presidential election results in Pennsylvania based on legally debunked claims of voter fraud.

Shapiro, who has a track record as a mostly moderate Democrat, raised more than $65 million for his campaign this year. He went unchallenged in the May primary. Mastriano entered the crowded nine-Republican primary with far less money and a bruising brand of far-right conservatism infused with the rhetoric of Christian nationalism. His message wasn’t just that he had better ideas. It was that his GOP opponents were inferior in their ideology.

A conservative super PAC spent $13 million in the primary trying to stop Mastriano, expressing caution that he could not win over the voters needed in a general election. He still won easily.

Mastriano raised nearly $7 million this year as major party organizations like the Republican Governors Association refused to offer support. Mastriano and a campaign surrogate, Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer, routinely attacked GOP groups for not funding the campaign. Mastriano complained his party “stabs their own people in the back.”

By contrast, the Democratic Governors Association gave Shapiro $1.6 million in the closing weeks of the election. And a pair of Republican super PACs organized to oppose Mastriano, urging GOP voters to back Shapiro.

Pennsylvania is a big and diverse state where candidates seeking statewide office need broadcast and cable television commercials to introduce themselves to voters and draw contrasts with their opponents.

There, Shapiro had the advantage even before the primary. He started airing ads attacking Mastriano just before the primary, in what was widely seen as an attempt by the Democrat to boost the one Republican he wanted to run against.

Shapiro shrugged that off, saying Mastriano looked likely to be the Republican nominee so he got an early start on defining an opponent.

On television and on the campaign trail, Shapiro used three prongs of attack to regularly skewer Mastriano.

First was Mastriano’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the campaign money he spent to bus supporters to the Jan. 6, 2021, Washington rally that erupted into a Capitol-storming riot. Shapiro noted that Mastriano has claimed that, if elected, he could decertify any election machines if he disputed the results.

Then came Gab, Mastriano’s $5,000 investment for consulting from the social media platform that is rife with antisemitism, bigotry, and racism. Mastriano was interviewed by Gab’s founder, praising his work and saying, “Thank God for what you’ve done.”

The controversy brewed for weeks, with Democrats and Republicans assailing Mastriano. He eventually deleted his Gab account and distanced himself from the antisemitism, while also painting himself as a victim of politicians who criticized him and media reports about the controversy.

Finally, Mastriano’s primary vow to ban all abortion in the state ran headlong into the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June to overturn Roe vs. Wade, returning the issue to the states. Mastriano, in campaign videos and during a debate before the primary, called abortion his top priority, with no exceptions for cases of incest, rape, or to save the mother’s life.

Mastriano attempted to walk that back, noting that a governor could take no action on abortion access without the state General Assembly first approving legislation. He cast that as future decisions that would fall in the hands of a different branch of government.

Shapiro backed Davis of Allegheny County for lieutenant governor. Davis won the three-candidate Democratic primary with 63% of the vote.

Mastriano backed former congressional candidate Teddy Daniels from Wayne County, who finished third in the nine-candidate Republican primary for lieutenant governor. State Rep. Carrie Lewis DelRosso of Allegheny County won that primary with 25.6% of the vote and became Mastriano’s running mate.

Staff writer Jason Laughlin contributed to this article.