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State Senator Doug Mastriano, a potential gubernatorial candidate in 2022, visited the United States Capitol on January 6 and even announced a bus to take the protesters there. In the weeks following the deadly riot, right-wing state official Daryl Metcalfe said on Facebook that the FBI called his office to ask about the day of the insurgency and called the intelligence line of the agency “snitch of gold”.
“This is not the party I belonged to years ago,” said Robert Byer, former Republican judge and legal adviser to George HW Bush in 1988. presidential campaign in Pennsylvania. “The very idea that officials might challenge the integrity of the election in our Commonwealth bothers me enormously. It bothers me as a citizen.
In 2016, the state’s GOP shift to the right was a boon to the party: Trump became the first Republican to win the presidential election in Pennsylvania in nearly 30 years. But since then it has caused damage. After hanging on to Trump, the GOP candidates for governor and senator in 2018 lost double digits. Democrats also won House seats that year in part thanks to the Philadelphia suburb, a former GOP stronghold. And in the fall, Biden took over Pennsylvania, again fueled by a backlash from Trump in the populated suburb of the state’s largest city.
Next year proposes another referendum on Trumpification of the Republicans of Pennsylania: there will be rare open seats for the governor and the senator. Never-Trump Democrats and Republicans promise to make swing voters remember efforts to overturn the state’s presidential election results based on unsubstantiated allegations. Republicans say the party’s pro-Trump base will be energized by lawmakers who denounced voter fraud and opposed Biden voters.
“They are very happy to have stood up for them,” said former GOP Representative Lou Barletta, a leading Trump ally, of how supporters of the president view lawmakers who sought to block the results of the state electoral college. Barletta, who is considering a gubernatorial campaign, said: “We shouldn’t go back to the old Republican Party for this reason: the Republican Party has grown more today to represent working people.
As the newly emerging face of Pennsylvania’s MAGA movement, Perry’s recent actions “would make him a high priority target on our list,” said Sarah Longwell, co-founder of the Republican Accountability Project, which plans to spend $ 50 million to support the GOP lawmakers who impeached Trump and ousted the former president’s loyalists. “Anyone who sought to help the president’s senior officials in Georgia work to overturn the results of free and fair elections should be held accountable.”
The startling revelation that Perry, until recently a little-known congressman outside of Pennsylvania, made the very unorthodox decision to introduce Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark to Trump was made public over the course of the weekend. As the New York Times first reported, Clark made an unsuccessful attempt to oust Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Perry also reportedly spoke with Clark and Trump about the prospect of a letter from the Justice Department to Georgia state lawmakers claiming that an investigation into electoral fraud could change the state election, which Biden won. .
In a statement to reporters, Perry confirmed his role in introducing the two as well as their general discussions on the election, but provided a few other details.
“Over the past four years, I have worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various legislative issues. When President Trump asked if I would do an introduction, I forced him, ”he said. “My conversations with the President or Deputy Attorney General, as they have been with everyone I spoke to after the election, were a reiteration of the many concerns about the integrity of our elections and that these allegations should at least be investigated to reassure voters that they had indeed participated in free and fair elections. “
Pennsylvania politicians attribute the right-wing turn of the state’s Republican Party to a combination of familiar factors: Trump’s presidency, the role of gerrymandering in creating highly partisan neighborhoods, the polarization fueled by cable television and the social media.
“The tightened low-turnout primary elections in the Gerrymander-designed districts unsurprisingly make it easier for extreme candidates,” said David Thornburgh, chairman of the Good Government Committee of Seventy, and son of the late centrist governor. “My father’s wing of the party was the Moderate to Liberal Republican of the Northeast. You have to search terribly hard to find someone who stays in this category. “
The collapse of the GOP in and around the Philadelphia Pass counties also played a role. As the suburbs became more liberal and the party became more socially conservative, moderate Republican lawmakers such as Ryan Costello and Charlie Dent were succeeded by Democrats, a process that was sped up by the redesign of the district maps of the Congress by the State Supreme Court in 2018.
“The recent political fall of the Republican Party in the Southeast has led many centrist Republicans not to seek re-election or lose their re-election,” said Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican targeted by Trump for pushing back against baseless claims of electoral fraud in the city. “It certainly diminished the influence of moderate Republicans.
Christopher Nicholas, a Pennsylvania-based GOP consultant, also pointed to demographic trends in central Pennsylvania as playing a role.
“Congressman Perry and Senator Mastriano are from central conservative Pennsylvania,” he said. “There has always been a more conservative strain of the GOP here, and you add the fact that central Pennsylvania is growing.
Even though the moderates have lost significant power within the state’s Republican Party, they’re not quite dead yet – and some are seeking a comeback in 2022, especially at the state level where they are often better off. success. Costello is approaching a Senate bid for the seat held by retired Senator Pat Toomey. Schmidt left the door open to an upper office. Dan Hilferty, the former CEO of Independence Health Group who has occasionally backed Democrats, is considering becoming a Republican as governor.
The Republican Accountability Project has said it will wait and see the outcome of the redistribution this year – the state is expected to lose a seat due to the shift change – to decide on its exact game plan with regard to Perry and other pro-Trump lawmakers. But the group said they could run negative ads against Perry before that. The Congressional Democratic campaign committee, meanwhile, is in talks with former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, the Democrat who unsuccessfully tried to oust Perry in 2020, according to a person familiar with the talks.
DePasquale and other Pennsylvania Democrats called on Perry to step down, saying “he was part of an attempted coup.” DePasquale predicted that Trump’s sharp turnout boost that benefited Republicans last year “won’t be at stake in 2022.” But his nearly 7-point loss to Perry – one of the biggest disappointments for Democrats in the state, which came after DePasquale has raised millions of dollars and has been regularly well polled – shows the strength of the Conservatives politicians in Pennsylvania.
“People here love the congressman,” Nicholas said. “And I think that has always been Congressman Perry’s saving grace, is that he’s very, very, very conservative – shameless about it – but he’s a nice guy.”
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