Doug Mastriano says an early GOP endorsement won’t keep him out of the 2026 Pa. governor’s race: ‘I have a plan’

From polling social media for his next campaign logo to posting an AI-generated image of kids gathered around a “Doug 4 Gov” graffiti message on his X account, State. Sen. Doug Mastriano hasn’t been coy online about his interest in running for Pennsylvania governor again.

Mastriano (R., Franklin), who lost in 2022 to Gov. Josh Shapiro by nearly 15 percentage points and 800,000 votes, said in an interview with The Inquirer on Friday that he is close to entering the 2026 race for governor. And, Mastriano said, he won’t be deterred from running by GOP insiders who plan to endorse in the race in September, 15 months before the general election and approximately eight months before the primary. The state GOP is likely to endorse Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who is expected to announce her bid for governor in the next few weeks, and powerful labor unions that previously supported her for treasurer have come out against her.

» READ MORE: Stacy Garrity hasn’t even entered the race for Pa. governor yet and the jabs are already flying

The right-wing senator from Gettysburg said he has not made a final decision about whether he’s going to run for governor next year and will make the choice in tandem with his wife, Rebbie.

“I will announce on my timeline, not according to pressure from party insiders looking to rush an endorsement,” Mastriano said in a statement. “The future of our movement won’t be dictated by insiders. It will be led by the people.”

However, Mastriano, 61, has in recent weeks accelerated his hinting online about another gubernatorial bid. Last week, he posted a potential campaign logo that he said his X followers chose as their favorite, featuring his name and a keystone symbol filled with an American flag. “Here is the people’s choice,” he wrote.

He frequently reshares posts from X users encouraging him to run, or his previous endorsements during the 2022 race, including that of President Donald Trump and now-FBI Director Kash Patel. Politico later reported that Trump regretted endorsing Mastriano, and the president said earlier this year he would support U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser if he ran for governor, before Meuser ultimately declined to run.

In a written statement prior to an interview with The Inquirer, Mastriano wrote that “I have a plan” to beat Shapiro in 2026, noting that the late Gov. Bob Casey Sr. ran for governor four times before winning in 1996.

“Now it’s up to the establishment to get off their behinds, stop whining and complaining and wringing their hands, and actually be helpful this time,” Mastriano said in the interview.

He added that GOP insiders “risk losing the grassroots movement that we developed” through resistance to COVID-19 closures and “voting integrity efforts” in 2020, when Mastriano called for an investigation into baseless claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.

Mastriano’s interest in another gubernatorial bid complicates things for the state GOP establishment, which has been trying to coalesce around Garrity as their best shot at challenging the unusually popular Shapiro in 2026. Garrity also has yet to formally announce her candidacy for governor. No candidate has formally announced their candidacy for governor, and Shapiro himself still has to announce his reelection campaign.

Republican Party insiders are concerned they won’t be able to stop Mastriano from winning the primary if he gets in the race, potentially hurting down-ballot candidates, such as retaining the two GOP congressional pick-ups in the 2024 election.

Jim Worthington, a Trump elector and Bucks County fitness empire owner, called Mastriano “a good guy,” who has “a right to run,” but said he and other party leaders worry about his candidacy.

“Doug Mastriano would be a death sentence, for not only the governor’s race, but also would hurt us so bad in keeping the [GOP-held] Congress,” Worthington said.

“People need to speak out, not in a way that they attack the guy,” he added. “He has a right to do what he wants, but I have a right to say it would be terrible for our party.”

Another prominent GOP leader in the state, who did not want to go on record criticizing his own party, said he is not too confident at this stage that any GOP candidate can beat Shapiro but the sooner the party can coalesce around a candidate like Garrity, who he thinks would have a better shot, the harder they can work to avoid down-ballot losses.

Mastriano called those fears “absolute utter nonsense.” He attributed his lacking performance in 2022 to the GOP’s failure to embrace early voting and redistricting. Now, he said, he is ready to deploy his grassroots supporters to get more GOP voters to utilize early in-person voting and mail voting as Democrats have since 2020.

“I won’t run unless I believe I can win,” Mastriano added.

The GOP insiders wary of another Mastriano run haven’t been making their concerns known to Mastriano himself, he said.

“Not one of the insiders have had the courage to speak with me directly,” he said. “All I’m hearing from insiders and outsiders is encouragement to run.”

The party’s promise to endorse a candidate in September — more than 15 months before the general election — “deprives the people of a voice,” he added.

Mastriano has also floated the idea of running with Garrity, as they are both retired U.S. Army colonels and have some overlapping grassroots supporters. She has not commented publicly on the idea.

If Trump weighs in again on the race, Mastriano said he will listen to his decision, noting the president is “the biggest factor in any race.”

But Mastriano remains confident in his supporters, who in 2022 collected a historic 29,000 signatures to get him on the ballot, adding they are “active and battle-ready in every county across Pennsylvania.”

“We have the grassroots. They remain with Rebbie and I,” Mastriano added. “We fought the fight when no one else showed up.”