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Mastriano Called Out for Link to
Extremist Social Media Site
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
S o, these are the facts:
Pennsylvania Republican
gubernatorial candidate Doug
Mastriano paid $5,000 to Gab, a social
media site, for “campaign consulting,”
per a campaign finance disclosure. Gab
is known as a haven for antisemites
like the Tree of Life building alleged
shooter, who posted there before he
went into the Pittsburgh synagogue.

Mastriano’s payment got him automatic
follows from people who joined the site,
growing his following from a little over
2,000 accounts to more than 38,000.

The state senator, who represents
several counties in the central part of
Pennsylvania, also has made 73 posts
on Gab since joining in February. None
Doug Mastriano
Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images via JTA.org
of his posts were antisemitic, though
several criticized his Jewish opponent
in the gubernatorial race — Attorney
General Josh Shapiro, a Montgomery
County resident. And many of the
comments on Mastriano’s posts about
Shapiro were very much antisemitic;
scroll down for a second on one of
them, and you can find a swastika in
the poster’s handle.

Does all of that make Mastriano an
antisemite? Pretty much, according to Shapiro,
the Pennsylvania Democratic Party,
Pittsburgh-based lawmakers and even
the Republican Jewish Coalition,
a political advocacy group that tries
to connect the Jewish community to
Republican politicians, per its website.

Every one of those people and groups
condemned Mastriano for his asso-
ciation with the site in recent days
after Media Matters reported the “con-
sulting” payment from the candidate’s
campaign finance disclosure.

Shapiro, whose campaign paid for a
television ad labeling Mastriano as “one
of Donald Trump’s strongest support-
ers,” implying that Republicans should
8 JULY 28, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
vote for him, criticizes him on the trail
as a danger to Pennsylvanians across
the commonwealth. After this story
broke, Shapiro took to Facebook to pro-
mote a press conference by Pittsburgh
lawmakers condemning Mastriano.

The Democratic gubernatorial can-
didate did not attend the press con-
ference, but in his post he wrote the
following: “A haven for white supremacists,
extremists and antisemites — Gab
empowered the Tree of Life Synagogue
shooter to spread his hate online
before murdering 11 Jewish people in
Pittsburgh. As we speak, anyone that creates a
Gab account will automatically follow
Doug Mastriano — because he paid the
site thousands of dollars to do it. Join
Pittsburghers in calling out this hatred.”
Later, a Shapiro spokesman
denounced Mastriano to the Jewish
Exponent. “This is who Doug Mastriano is — he
paid thousands of dollars for antise-
mitic, racist, alt-right extremists to be
part of his campaign for governor —
and he believes those individuals make



Josh Shapiro speaks at his campaign kickoff rally at Penn State-Abington in
October 2021. 
Photo by Jarrad Saffren
up the core of his campaign,” Will
Simons said.

Marisa Nahem, a communica-
tions adviser for the Pennsylvania
Democratic Party, also chimed in on
July 22 on behalf of the party.

“Mastriano’s association with Gab
— a ‘haven’ for white supremacists,
violent extremists and antisemites that
was ‘key’ in the deadliest attack on
Jewish people in U.S. history — is the
latest example of why Mastriano is the
most dangerous gubernatorial candi-
date in Pennsylvania history,” she said.

The Pittsburgh press conference
organized by the Shapiro campaign on
July 21, which also aired on Facebook
Live, featured several elected officials
from the city, including state Senate
Democratic Leader Jay Costa, State
Rep. Dan Frankel, who represents the
district that includes Tree of Life, and
Councilman Rev. Ricky Burgess. All
echoed similar themes.

Costa said Mastriano did this “pur-
posefully,” to reach people with “hate
in their heart.” Frankel called Gab “a
festering cesspool of intolerance” that
sees Black and brown people, LGBTQ+
people and Muslims as threats to the
“white nationalist vision that unifies
Gab users.”
Burgess concluded that Mastriano’s
Gab account showed his allegiance to
former President Donald Trump, who
has endorsed Mastriano, and to the
“basket of deplorables” on the site.

With that last line, Burgess was quot-
ing the description of many Trump
supporters offered by Hillary Clinton
during the 2016 election.

“He believes the hatred on those mes-
sage boards will translate into an elec-
tion victory for him on Nov. 8,” Frankel
said of Mastriano. “But I believe he is
wrong about Pennsylvania.”
Even the Republican Jewish Coalition
seems to agree with this last state-
ment. Matt Brooks, the organization’s
executive director, said that Mastriano
should be trying to win over Jewish
Republicans by calling out antisemi-
tism and focusing more on Shapiro’s
“big government agenda.”
“Doug Mastriano’s campaign unfortu-
nately seems intent on sending a message
of exclusion,” Brooks said. “We strongly
urge Doug Mastriano to end his associa-
tion with Gab, a social network rightly
seen by Jewish Americans as a cesspool
of bigotry and antisemitism.”
Mastriano’s campaign did not make
the candidate available for an interview
or offer a response to questions. JE
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com. David
Rullo of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle,
an affiliated paper, contributed to this
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