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August 5: Bad Time for Berks

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At War With Traditional Media. FOP Endorses Oz for Senate. More Counties Involved in Ballot Dispute. Bad Time for Berks. Here is the Playbook.

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Top Story

1. Playing Politics With The Media

It is now clear that Republican Doug Mastriano believes that he has more than just Democrat Josh Shapiro as an opponent for governor’s mansion in Harrisburg.

He is also battling the media.

In the past week, he has taken on WTAE-TV, the Meadville Tribune, WICU-TV and attempted to bar reporters who were invited to attend by the event’s sponsors.

Can a candidate for office in a state as large as Pennsylvania continue to avoid the outlets that many older Keystone State voters turn to for their political information?

Related

Fight Him, Shun Him … Embrace Him? Mastriano’s Relationship With GOP Leaders Mirrors Trump’s Rise. “GOP leaders rushed to stop him in the primary. When he won anyway, some polls unexpectedly showed him within reach of his Democratic rival, and the Republican establishment began to warm to him. But then he was engulfed by controversy — exactly the kind that GOP insiders had previously worried could sink his chances.” (POLITICO)

Doug Mastriano Won’t Say Whom He’s Picked to Run PA Elections – But We’ve Got a Good Guess. “The Republican nominee for governor says he’s picked a secretary of state, and that his choice is a woman. But he won’t say who. We look at the clues.” (Philadelphia Inquirer)

 

U.S. Senate

2. FOP Endorses Oz: ‘He Wants to Hold Criminals Accountable’

The campaign of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz got a shot in the arm as he received an endorsement from the Pennsylvania State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police.

The celebrity doctor attended the annual summer conference in Erie this week and accepted the nod of a group that represents 40,000 active and retired members.

PA FOP President Les Neri said his organization was proud to endorse Oz.

“He’s the candidate who will ensure police officers have the tools they need to protect the commonwealth, especially during these dangerous times,” Neri said. (PennLive)

Related

John Fetterman’s Campaign Asks PA TV Stations to Remove Ad Saying He Wants to ‘Eliminate Life Sentences for Murderers.’ “John Fetterman’s campaign for U.S. Senate is asking TV stations in Pennsylvania to pull down one of his opponent’s television ads for spreading “blatant lies and misinformation” about his criminal justice reform positions.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Trump’s TV Stars Pose Problems for the GOP. “Former President Trump loves celebrity — especially TV fame. But his enthusiasm is not working out so well for the Republican Party. Trump has backed a host of candidates in party primaries who are famous or have a track record in television, or both. But many of his chosen stars are underperforming, complicating the GOP’s electoral chances.” (The Hill)

 

Harrisburg

3. Butler County Joins Berks, Fayette and Lancaster Counties in Ballot Dispute

The Butler did it.

Others may have as well.

The list of counties that did not include disputed undated mail-in ballots in their primary election tallies to the Department of State (DOS) has grown from three to four with the addition of Butler County.

The DOS filed suit in Commonwealth Court against Berks, Fayette and Lancaster Counties in an effort to force the trio to certify their results. According to the Associated Press, lawyers for the DOS as well as Fayette County told Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer that Butler County also had not officially reported such votes.

Related

4th PA County Adds to Ballot Dispute As Candidate Sues to Quit. “Rep. Matthew Dowling’s district is in Fayette County, where the primary results have not been certified. Until he is deemed the winner of the nomination, the state isn’t letting him withdraw, and there’s a looming deadline for local party officials to pick a substitute.” (Associated Press)

Investigation Into Berks Primary Election Day Chaos Finds Chain of Mistakes. “An investigation commissioned by Berks County into the failures that led to primary election day problems concluded the issues originated with voter signatures not being uploaded to new electronic polls books before election day.” (Reading Eagle)

Berks County’s May Primary Was a Maelstrom of Failures. “An investigation into what went wrong in Berks County’s May primary shows a tangled chain of events, one leading to the next. That led to voters facing a range of difficulties checking in to cast their vote, and renewed criticism of the county’s handling of elections.” (WITF)

 

Around the Commonwealth

Toomey, Reschenthaler and Bipartisan Colleagues Call on State Department to Fight For Pittsburgh-Area Native Jailed in Russia. “Pennsylvania’s U.S. lawmakers are urging the State Department to recognize the plight of a Pittsburgh-area resident who has been sentenced to hard labor in Russia, and they are asking why the administration has not highlighted his case among other detained citizens, including WNBA player Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

American Airlines Cuts More Than 1,800 Flights at PHL for September and October. “More than 1,800 American Airlines domestic flights have been cut from Philadelphia International Airport’s September and October schedules in recent weeks as labor shortages coincide with rising demand for travel.” (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Bucks County Dems Want Doylestown Committee Woman to Resign After Her Jan. 6 Sentencing. “While Dawn Bancroft, 60, will face three years’ probation as part of her July 21 sentencing, the misdemeanor charge she pleaded guilty to in September won’t prevent her from serving as a local committeewoman, or in other elected office. She won the post in the May 17 primary.” (Bucks County Courier Times)

 

What We’re Watching/Listening To

Political Roundtable: The Battle for Pennsylvania. Join Holly Otterbein, national political reporter at POLITICO; Stephen Medvic, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College; and Jonathan Tamari, national political reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. (WHYY, 10 AM)

Inside Story. Join WPHT 1210 radio host Dom Giordano and PoliticsPA managing editor Steve Ulrich to talk about the latest on the campaign front for Governor and the U.S. Senate. (WPVI-TV, Sunday, 11:30 AM)

Pennsylvania Newsmakers. Terry Fitzpatrick, president of the Energy Association of PA, and Bob Latham, executive vice president of Associated PA Contractors. (Various Outlets, check date and time in your area)

 

Commentary

8 Responses

  1. Smart to see our PA Fraternal Order of Police endorsing Oz for US Senate. All those 2020 riots and you guys nevertheless got thrown under the bus. The only cops our disingenuous MSM feigns concern for are the four Capitol police drama actors they propped up after the over-hyped January sixth three hour donneybrook that Associated Press still swears was an armed insurrection.
    All public service first responders should follow suit and vote accordingly – union or not – being that the DNC endorses firing them after serving the public throughout their election rig ruse (AKA COVID 19 / 22.7 / ad infinitum) before the ‘kinda sorta vaccines’ were available. That’s despite their acquired immunity simply for daring to not want an unproven concoction injected into their bodies to help Democrat politicians appear concerned about a disease not much worse than the flu for 99% of the population, yet apparently enough for them to render our US economy screwed up beyond all recognition. Made no sense then and still doesn’t now.
    Where’s all those Democrats cheerleading ‘my-body-my-choice’ for our unsung working people who never had the luxury of working remotely?

    1. How smart are Democrats? Under Trump we had four years of $2.00 gas; four years of no new wars; four years of a Southern border ten times more secure than what’s going on since Biden.
      ‘Mean tweets’ aside, I’m thinking putting Shapiro on a pedestal to in effect protract four more years of useless Wolf policy is the epitome of just how “dung” your vaunted DNC takes Pennsylvania voters to be, full stop.

  2. Mastriano is right – he is battle Shapiro and the media. The media is an arm of the Democrats, and that is obvious. No smart Republican should ever give them any time of day, as their entire goal is to tear them down and help the Democrats.

    1. Since there are very few “smart Republicans”, not to worry about their influence. PA needs to be much more concerned about the poorly educated, white supremacist MAGA GOP.

      1. “PA needs to be much more concerned about the poorly educated, white supremacist MAGA GOP.”
        Your unfounded “white supremacist” whiny drivel aside, ‘America last’ apparently is your preferred political stance, and you endorse paying for that with our grandkids’ futures, so that countries the likes of China and India get decades-long passes to pollute the planet, while America’s DNC – ignoring our USA being much more environmentally responsible since 1970 – continues to stifle its own energy sector, hence making Vladimir Putin’s Russia flush with enough newfound oil revenue to easily afford invading Ukraine a year later.
        Seems from here that folks like yourself are the ones ‘lacking education’ on the state of our union for the last half-century or so.

    2. Exactly correct. The so-called mainstream media has been at war for their conjoined Democratic party against all things Republican since the day Donald Trump announced his candidacy – and dared to actually beat the DNC’s ‘heir apparent’ Hillary – and they haven’t relented since.
      Last minute mail ballot time extensions and strategically-located-for-DNC-harvest drop boxes aside, isn’t the virtually one-sided fear mongering about how horrible a Republican governor in Pennsylvania would be about as tantamount to de-facto election rigging as it gets?

    3. Exactly correct. The so-called mainstream media has been at war for their conjoined Democratic party against all things Republican since the day Donald Trump announced his candidacy – and dared to actually beat the DNC’s ‘heir apparent’ Hillary – and they haven’t relented since.
      Last minute mail ballot time extensions and strategically-located-for-DNC-harvest drop boxes aside, isn’t the virtually one-sided fear mongering about how horrible a Republican governor in Pennsylvania would be about as tantamount to de-facto election rigging as it gets?





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