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PA-Gov: NYT, "Mastriano’s (R) Attacks on Jewish School Set Off Outcry Over Antisemitic Signaling" [1]
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Date: 2022-10-10
Anti-Semitic asshole:
“You have a candidate who is Jewish, an observant Jewish candidate, who puts his observance and his faith in his campaign ads,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. “And then you have someone who associates with unapologetic, unabashed antisemites running against him.”
The focus on Mr. Shapiro’s religion has freighted one of the nation’s most consequential elections with an unusually raw and personal dimension.
“Apparently now it’s some kind of racist thing if I talk about the school,” Mr. Mastriano said at a recent event as he cast himself as a champion of school choice for all. “It’s a very expensive, elite school.”
It is a Jewish day school, where students are given both secular and religious instruction. But Mr. Mastriano’s language in portraying it as an elitist reserve seemed to be a dog whistle.
Mr. Mastriano, who promotes Christian power and disdains the separation of church and state, has repeatedly lashed Mr. Shapiro for attending and sending his children to what Mr. Mastriano calls a “ privileged, exclusive, elite ” school, suggesting to one audience that it evinced Mr. Shapiro’s “disdain for people like us.”
Some of those voters have recoiled from Mr. Mastriano’s opposition to abortion rights under any circumstance , or from his strident election denialism . But the race between Mr. Mastriano, a state senator, and his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro — a Jewish day school alum who features challah in his advertising and routinely borrows from Pirkei Avot, a collection of Jewish ethics — has also centered to an extraordinary degree on Mr. Shapiro’s religion.
Four years after the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue , believed to be the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, has rattled a diverse swath of the state’s Jewish community, alarming liberal Jews with his remarks and far-right associations , and giving pause to more conservative ones.
Mastriano isn’t just an Anti-Semite and an Election Denialist, he’s also a Poll Denialist:
Mr. Mastriano and his supporters have likened his underdog status to Mr. Youngkin’s rise in Virginia, as well as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ election and Mr. Trump’s in 2016. To hammer that point home, Mr. Mastriano says Mr. DeSantis cautioned him, in a visit to Pittsburgh in August, to “stay away from those polls.” Polls are used to discourage people from going out to vote, Mr. Mastriano has said.
Democratic insiders and analysts say that from the looks of it, Mr. Mastriano’s campaign isn’t doing some of the things that made them squirm about Mr. Trump’s or Mr. Youngkin’s prospects. Notably, Mr. Mastriano isn’t raising the same amount of money, hasn’t been on TV consistently with advertisements, isn’t getting help from some of the institutional GOP groups like the Republican Governors Association and isn’t engaging with the media as a means to get his message out.
Mr. Trump got “as much free media as you could ever want,” noted Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
Mike Mikus, a prominent Democratic strategist in Western Pennsylvania, said Mr. Shapiro, meanwhile, is doing all the things a candidate is supposed to do, from fundraising and organizing to crafting a solid message. Over the past four months, Mr. Shapiro outspent Mr. Mastriano by more than 27 to 1, spending more than $27 million on the race.
“Every candidate that I’ve ever consulted, I’ve said to always run like you’re 10 points behind, and I expect Josh Shapiro to do that all the way through Election Day,” Mr. Mikus said. “That said, Mastriano ain’t no Youngkin. He ain’t no DeSantis. They had money, he does not.”
In response to a Post-Gazette inquiry about what they’re seeing on the ground that makes them confident the polls are wrong, a Mastriano campaign spokesperson responded — in an email — that the polling industry is plagued by many of the same issues that were exposed in the 2016 cycle.
“The devil is in the details with these polls — corporate media buys polls to discourage voters from turning out,” the spokesperson said. “But they frequently oversample women, Democrats, and college-educated voters — and often only poll registered voters, instead of likely voters.”
The Mastriano spokesperson noted that pollsters didn’t accurately predict the outcome of the May GOP primary that the candidate won by a blowout margin. Most polls had him up by double digits, yes, but he ended up winning by about 24% over second-place finisher Lou Barletta.
“Our campaign is propelled by a powerful grassroots movement that is determined to restore freedom in Pennsylvania, which is why Doug Mastriano will defeat his opponent in November,” the Mastriano spokesperson added.
Mr. Borick said there’s no doubt that Mr. Mastriano has a passionate base of supporters, but it begs the question: is it big enough to carry him to victory? His following is loyal, Mr. Borick said, “but he’s not a figure like Donald Trump who could rely on past name recognition.”
Mr. Borick said Mr. Mastriano’s success will “truly rely on having exceptional mobilization of the grassroots that we really haven’t seen before in Pennsylvania.”
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/10/2128200/-PA-Gov-NYT-Mastriano-s-R-Attacks-on-Jewish-School-Set-Off-Outcry-Over-Antisemitic-Signaling
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