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Attorney General Josh Shapiro talks to supporters at a canvass kickoff in Swarthmore on Oct. 8.

Photo by Jarrad Saff ren
ney general.

“On his watch, crime has risen by 40%,” Mastriano
says of Shapiro’s tenure as AG.

“One thousand carjackings in Philadelphia alone
this year,” he continues. “Are you kidding me?”
“He’s worse than Tom Wolf,” he says later.

Th e crowd seems to agree. Mastriano talks in a low
monotone, so he’s hard to hear at times. But his hun-
dreds of supporters nonetheless cheer loudly, hold
up campaign signs with the slogan “Walk as Free
People” and even stand in unison.

Carolyn Di’Arcangelo, a resident of East Vincent
Township, said she believes abortion is “personal”
and that she’s “not judging anybody.” But she also
said she’s voting for Mastriano.

“I do not want Shapiro because he’s a career politi-
cian. I hate career politicians,” she added. “I just don’t
like him as a Democrat.”
Later in the day at Th e Fuge in Warminster, Bucks
County, even more supporters turned out for similar
reasons. Mastriano and his volunteers said almost
1,000 people showed up and, while that number may
have been exaggerated, it was not exaggerated by
much. Why Shapiro Might Win Anyway
By all traditional measures, Josh Shapiro is winning
this race.

In addition to his lead in the polls, the Abington
resident is convincing the mainstream media to
buy his credible argument about how dangerous
Mastriano might be for the commonwealth. On Oct.

9, Th e Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Shapiro and
said a Mastriano win would “eff ectively end democ-
16 OCTOBER 20, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
racy in Pennsylvania.”
Th e Jewish Democrat has also outspent his oppo-
nent by more than $40 million. Th e Mastriano cam-
paign just ran its fi rst television ad in early October.

And fi nally, Shapiro, a politician with a career dating
almost 20 years, has been his party’s sole candidate
since October 2021. Mastriano, on the other hand,
won a crowded primary and has not gotten support
from the national Republican Governors Association.

As LancasterOnline reported on Oct. 9, many for-
mer Republican offi ceholders in Pennsylvania have
endorsed Shapiro.

Yet as Shapiro well knows, in 2022, none of this
guarantees anything. And in fact, Mastriano is draw-
ing hundreds, sometimes close to 1,000, supporters
on the campaign trail. To beat an opponent who can
score, you cannot simply run out the clock.

So on Oct. 8, a sunny Saturday in the Philadelphia
area with temperatures in the 60s, the Democrat hit
the trail.

In the morning outside of the United Steelworkers’
hall in Media, he used a 10-minute version of his
stump speech to motivate his assembled supporters,
more than 100 people, most of them members of
labor unions, to go knock on doors and spread the
word. Much like his opponent, Shapiro opens his
speech with the issues that are defi ning this cam-
paign. On crime, like Mastriano, he promises more cops.

On the Pennsylvania economy, like Mastriano, he
pledges to drill. And on schools, like Mastriano,
he promises more options for kids. (In Shapiro’s
vision, that means vocational-technical programs.

In Mastriano’s, it means redirecting state funding to
students and families over public schools.)
“We’re running for offi ce not just to win an elec-
tion,” Shapiro says during his Media speech. “But to
meet this moment for Pennsylvania.”
Josh Shapiro