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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



And like Mastriano, Shapiro draws cheers and
applause. His crowd is not as big as his opponent’s
from the previous Saturday because it’s a canvass
kickoff , not a rally, but it’s just as enthusiastic.

Later in the day in nearby Swarthmore, more than
50 people crowd into a small room in a nondescript
offi ce building. It’s another canvass kickoff . Only
these residents of Swarthmore and its surrounding
area are not union members. Th ey are just supporters.

Many believe that, in the wake of Trump’s attempt
to “stop the steal” of the 2020 election and Mastriano’s
support for it, democracy is in peril; many oth-
ers want to uphold abortion access for women in
Pennsylvania; some are even former Republicans
who resent the party’s Trumpian turn.

None, however, mention crime or the economy as
their reasons for coming out.

“I’m worried that the MAGA part of my party is
taking over,” says Pat Brodeur of Wallingford. “And
they are going to hurt our future elections.”
Shapiro has been a state representative, a
Montgomery County commissioner and now an
attorney general. He understands how to craft and
communicate a narrative about his career.

In this race, he is pitching himself as a public servant
who takes on “big fi ghts,” like balancing Montgomery
County’s budget aft er years of Republican excess,
suing the Catholic Church over sexual abuse allega-
tions and settling for $1 billion with pharmaceutical
companies that pushed opioids. Th is pitch started
last October during Shapiro’s campaign kickoff , but
aft er Mastriano won the Republican Primary in the
spring, it took on new meaning.

Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano delivers a speech on Dec. 14, 2021.

Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images via JTA.org
Mastriano, the woman-hating, election-denying
friend of the antisemites, as Shapiro oft en portrays
him, became the “big fi ght.” In his stump speeches
on Oct. 8, the Democrat reached the big fi ght beat
around the middle, aft er he got through his plans for
Doug Mastriano
dealing with crime and stimulating the economy, but
before he orated his way through his depiction of his
rival. At the day’s last public event, a campaign offi ce
opening in West Philadelphia, Shapiro looked out
over a parking lot of more than 100 excited support-
ers. Th ey came from the Main Line, Center City and
nearby neighborhoods. It was his most diverse crowd
of the day.

And with more Black residents in the audience than
at either of his previous two events, the Democrat
painted his most vivid picture yet of his opponent.

He said Mastriano is the “only candidate in the
nation who is on a white supremacist website known
as Gab.” He talked about how a few years ago,
Mastriano wore a Confederate uniform for a picture
at the U.S. Army War College. And then he para-
phrased a Maya Angelou quote, “When someone tells
you who they are, believe them,” to emphasize that
Mastriano “keeps telling us who he is.”
“In Doug Mastriano’s Pennsylvania, unless you
think like him, and look like him, and vote like him,
and pray like him, and marry like him, you don’t
count,” Shapiro said. “Here’s my view: No matter
what you look like, where you come from, who you
love or who you pray to, you count in Pennsylvania,
and I want to be your governor.”
Th e crowd hollered.

“I will do everything I can to make sure that
Doug Mastriano is not elected,” said Sajda Purple
Blackwell, a West Philadelphia resident. “We don’t
need white supremacists in offi ce.” JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 17