Prayers, the pledge of allegiance and culture wars: Inside a Doug Mastriano rally in the final days of his long-shot bid for governor of Pennsylvania

• A Doug Mastriano rally in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, featured praying and wading into culture wars.
• The Republican candidate for governor is widely expected to lose on Election Day.

FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pennsylvania – On a crisp fall afternoon, around 100 supporters waited eagerly inside a banquet hall, with bedazzled campaign buttons for the Republican nominee for governor pinned on their T-shirts. In their hands were red rally towels emblazoned with his name, Doug Mastriano.

As Mastriano arrived, wearing a camouflage cap that read "Desert Storm Veteran" with the American flag printed on its bill, the crowd rose to its feet and swirled the towels in the air. Their hollers, whistles and applause drowned out the blaring of a Christian gospel song, Steven Curtis Chapman's "The Great Adventure," from a speaker.

Less than three minutes later, the room quickly fell silent as attendees – mostly older adults but some young, and mostly white but a handful of people of color – took their seats and bowed their heads in a prayer led by David Parker, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army's Medical Service Corps and now a part-time host at a local Catholic radio station.

"Let us walk assiduously, ladies and gentlemen," Parker said, "In these crucial last days for the campaign with God's help to restore Pennsylvania and our great nation to how our founding fathers established it, so we may walk as free people again."

Once more they all stood, right hands on their hearts, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Then they sang the "Star-Spangled Banner."

After a slate of local officials and candidates expressed their support for Mastriano, a state senator since 2019, his wife, Rebecca, introduced him.

"He's going to be the hardest fighter for you that you probably have ever seen in the governor's seat," she told the audience. "And I truly, truly believe that God has given everybody in this state a wake-up call."

Mastriano then took the stage for more than half an hour. He spoke comfortably, throwing out a mixture of historical references and jokes, as he condemned COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, attacked transgender youth, and called for election integrity and reform following the 2020 results. He vowed to expel gender "indoctrination" in classrooms, berated his Democratic opponent as soft on crime, pledged to make the state a net exporter of energy and blamed President Joe Biden for inflation.

"This is our hour, this is our day, this is our moment," Mastriano said as he wrapped up his remarks. "Let us seize this opportunity to take back our state and ensure that our kids and grandkids have the same freedoms and opportunities that you and I grew up with."

The October 27 rally in battleground Bucks County, roughly 22 miles north of Philadelphia, was just one stop on Mastriano's "Restore Freedom Tour" across Pennsylvania, where he's been delivering stump speeches to voters in an unconventional, long-shot bid for the state's highest office.

Polls show Mastriano lagging behind his rival, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, by double digits. National and state Republican donors and groups have offered little support to his candidacy. He's rejected speaking to the media. Critics have cast him as a far-right extremist, which he's repudiated. Strategists and pollsters deem it unlikely he'll win.

"Mastriano doesn't have much of a campaign to speak of," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor for Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "And so if Mastriano were to win, it would be entirely because the environment got so bad for Democrats."

But Mastriano's base is holding out hope, and Democrats aren't taking their lead for granted.

"Mastriano is basically – he's what America used to be," Parker told Insider after the event. "That's why he's resonating with so many people because he wants to restore how things used to be: civility, common sense – everything he said."

Mastriano's controversial stances

Mastriano started growing his loyal following in March 2020, when the raging pandemic forced Pennsylvania and the rest of the country to shut down. Almost nightly, he would live-stream on Facebook in front of his living room's fireplace, decrying the state's quarantine and "stay at home" orders. The "fireside chats" soon found an audience of Keystone State residents, transforming the previously obscure state senator into a revered figure in conservative circles.

"He's just been there the whole time," a Mastriano voter in Bucks County who only identified himself as Jeremy, told Insider. "He's stood firm and he has stood for values, and that's something we've lost."

Still, it wasn't until after the 2020 election that Mastriano's prominence ballooned. He elevated former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud and spearheaded efforts to challenge Biden's victory in the commonwealth. That culminated in him spending leftover state Senate campaign funds to bus protestors to Washington, DC, for the "Save America" rally on January 6, 2021. Mastriano was also there but says he did not break into the Capitol as throngs of Trump supporters violently had.

Staunch devotion to Trump eventually secured Mastriano a coveted endorsement from the former president, days before Pennsylvania's gubernatorial Republican primary. He prevailed over a crowded field with nearly 42% of the vote.

But Mastriano has since drawn concerns that he's unelectable. He came under fire over his spreading of 2020 falsehoods, his past peddling of other conspiracy theories, and his association with far-right activists. He's promoted Pizzagate, which alleged that 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton ran a child-sex ring out of a pizzeria, and QAnon, which purports that Trump is fighting to defeat a Satanic cabal of pedophilic elites.

Mastriano's faith-infused campaign has also been criticized as Christian nationalism, the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation and should therefore govern as one. Though he dismisses that characterization, Mastriano has previously said the separation of church and state was a "myth" and claimed that Islam is incompatible with the US Constitution. Following immense bipartisan criticism over his ties to Andrew Torba, the founder of the far-right social media platform Gab that's become a hub for espousing antisemitism, Mastriano sought to distance himself.

Observers say that Mastriano's outlandish views have alienated traditionally conservative and independent voters in a purple state like Pennsylvania. To win a statewide race, from the rust-belt towns to the suburbs, a "big tent" approach is usually the path to success.

"Who he is has cost him support of a broader coalition because he is, on many issues, farther out than the moderate voter or the middle-of-the-road voter," Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, told Insider.

Some local Republicans, however, have flocked to Mastriano's side, disputing that he's a divisive candidate who's driven away swing voters.

"I find that hilarious," Glenn Geissinger, chairman of Northampton County's GOP, a bellwether in the state, said. "What has he done that's polarizing?"

A 'grassroots' campaign

Along with his statewide tour, Mastriano is fueling his so-called grassroots operation by relying heavily on social media to get his name out, posting repeatedly to Facebook and Twitter. He's rejected media interviews with national, state and local outlets, opting instead to speak to friendly hosts on Fox News and Newsmax. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

While the strategy has certainly energized his base, experts say that's not enough to amass support from among the state's more than 8 million registered voters.

Shapiro, with $11 million still in the bank, has significantly outraised Mastriano, who has $2.6 million cash-on-hand as of late September. The Democratic nominee has spent chunks of money launching negative TV and digital ad blitz targeting Mastriano, who's failed to do the same.

"You can't get your message out one-on-one to voters," Josh Novotney, a Pennsylvania GOP strategist, told Insider. "You need to be up with massive ad buys and also trying to control the media and the news. I haven't seen much of either of that."

Mastriano's hyper-focus on culture wars, such as stoking anger over pandemic lockdowns when the nation has largely opened up, is also a losing tactic, according to political consultants.

"He has not done a good job at making the conversation about the bread-and-butter winning issues that every other Republican in the country is talking about that is in a competitive race – and that's crime and inflation," Novotney said.

"He may have talked about it a little bit," he added, but he "doesn't have the message discipline that I've seen to really make the race about that."

Yet Mastriano is banking on his word-of-mouth technique to propel him to a victory on November 8.

During the late October event, his campaign repeatedly urged the crowd to talk to their neighbors, knock on doors, and make phone calls to "spread the good word."

Unperturbed by the polls and the punditry

Shapiro, Pennsylvania's attorney general since 2017, won his 2020 reelection with 3,461,472 votes – more than any other candidate on the ballot, including Biden. His lengthy list of endorsements includes state law-enforcement officials, labor unions, and advocacy groups. Billboards along Pennsylvania's highways tout his backing from Republican voters.

But for all the political machinery on their side, Democrats remain worried about a surprise Mastriano upset.

"Voters are anxious and enthusiastic, but I'm concerned, especially on the Democrat side, that we need to make sure we don't take it for granted," Rogette Harris, chairwoman of Dauphin County's Democratic Party, told Insider in her Harrisburg office.

She pointed to a map on the wall – a sea of red – depicting Trump's stunning 2016 victory in Pennsylvania.

"My goal as chair is to campaign like we're losing, regardless of what the polls say so that people still vote," Harris said.

Republicans have the wind at their backs in this year's midterms, so it's possible Mastriano could become the state's next governor. But pollsters say it's a remote possibility.

Besides "Mastriano wearing an R," there's nothing else working in his favor, Borick said. "It's gotta be just an absolute, historic Republican wave to carry someone like Doug Mastriano over the line in this cycle."

Mastriano and his allies are unperturbed by the polls and the punditry. In the final stretch of the race, his social media messaging is persistent, and he's planned several campaign events, including one with Trump and Republican Senate nominee Mehmet Oz on Saturday.

"It's a different tactic and I pray it works," Joe Vichot, chairman of Lehigh County's GOP, told Insider. "I'm getting more and more confident every day that it will."