Doug Mastriano

On February 13, 2018, at the Otterbein Church in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Mastriano announced his candidacy for U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania's 9th congressional district, a seat being vacated by the retiring congressman Bill Shuster.[2][3] Less than a week after his announcement, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania redrew the congressional district map of Pennsylvania after ruling the previous map unconstitutional (due to gerrymandering by the majority Republican Party), and the area previously covered by the 9th district corresponds most closely to the new 13th district, so Mastriano became a candidate for Pennsylvania's 13th congressional district.[8] Mastriano ultimately finished fourth of the eight candidates in the primary election, receiving a total of 10,509 votes.[9]

On January 22, 2019, Mastriano announced that he intended to run for the State Senate seat being vacated by Rich Alloway in the 33rd District, saying he "can't, in good conscience, stand aside", wanting to "serve his country in a new way".[10] Mastriano won the Republican nomination for the May 21 election at a party conference held in Gettysburg on March 30, 2019.

On Mastriano's campaign page, he states that "marriage is between a man and woman – and that no amount of disinformation or political correctness will change these facts."[11]

Val DiGiorgio, the chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, said "Doug Mastriano is the kind of conservative candidate that reflects the values of South Central Pennsylvania and will be a key asset in helping advance the Republican agenda in Harrisburg."[12]

On May 21, 2019, Mastriano defeated Democrat Sarah Hammond to win the special election in the 33rd District.[13] Mastriano was sworn into the Pennsylvania Senate on June 10.[14]

On November 3, 2020, Mastriano was re-elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate for the 33rd District by 70.6% of the vote, with 91,456 votes out of a total of 129,631. His opponent Rich Sterner garnered 38,175 votes, or 29.4%.[7]

Mastriano has been criticized by some religious leaders and the Pennsylvania Democratic leadership[15] for posts on his campaign's Facebook page, "Doug Mastriano Fighting for Freedom".[16]

In May 2019, during his campaign for state senate, Mastriano was accused of spreading Islamophobia after sharing several posts on his campaign Facebook page targeting Muslims. "Islam wants to kill gay rights, Judaism, Christianity and pacifism" read one of the posts, which critiqued the common "Coexist" bumper stickers.[17][18] After the fire at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, Mastriano had shared an image that was circulated suggesting that it had been an act by Muslim terrorists and had a caption reading "something wicked comes this way".[18][19] In April 2018, his campaign Facebook page shared an article headlined, "A Dangerous Trend: Muslims running for office".[20]

While various Democratic critics have condemned his Facebook posts, neither Mastriano, the county, nor the state Republican party responded publicly about the issue.[21][22]

On March 17, 2020, Mastriano called for suspension of the HIPAA law to allow the Department of Health share more COVID-19 data, including publishing the names and addresses of those infected with the virus.[23]

On March 28, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mastriano proposed legislation that would allow Pennsylvania businesses to reopen if they followed CDC mitigation guidelines, subject to health department and law enforcement inspections.[24][25]

Mastriano spoke during an anti-lockdown protest held on April 20, 2020, in support of reopening Pennsylvania during the state's ongoing pandemic.[26]

On May 11, 2020, Mastriano called for the resignation of Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, saying she was "being complicit in the virus spreading through our elder care homes, triggered by unscientific and illogical directives, forcing them to readmit COVID-19 patients", and that she was "responsible for the deaths of approximately 2,500 of our citizens, and display[ing] the gross incompetence of someone unfit for office".[27]

In May 2020 Mastriano wrote a letter signed by other Republican state legislators and a county commissioner calling for his home county of Franklin County to move out of the "red" phase of Governor Tom Wolf's reopening plan. At the time Franklin County's seat Chambersburg had one of the highest average daily growth rates of COVID-19 cases in the country. Mastriano's initiative was opposed by the mayor of Chambersburg and two county commissioners.[28]

In response to a Pennsylvania mask-wearing order, Mastriano called for a mask-burning party at a rally in Gettysburg on July 22, 2020.[29] At the rally, Mastriano urged people to reject store employees telling them to wear a mask and "tell them to mind your own business and say you're exempt."[30]

On November 5, 2020, Mastriano alleged various irregularities in the voting process for the U.S. presidential election and called for the resignation of Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar. He sent a lengthy letter to Boockvar saying that "Nothing is more crucial to Americans than confidence that our voices will be heard through voting," and "Pennsylvanians no longer feel secure in casting their vote."[31]

On November 6, Mastriano and two other state senators, Michele Brooks and Scott Hutchinson, issued a joint memo calling for a full recount "in any counties where state law was broken, regardless of the Department of State’s instructions, as well as in any precinct where questionable actions were demonstrated."[32]

At Mastriano's request,[33][34] a public meeting of the Republican Party's Majority Policy Committee of the Pennsylvania Senate[35] was held on November 25, 2020, at the Wyndham hotel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, about claims of election fraud.[36] The meeting, which lasted more than four hours, was organized by Mastriano (although Mastriano is not a member of the Policy Committee)[37] and was chaired by Pennsylvania State Senator Dave Argall.[35][38] Trump's legal team, including Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani, gave a lengthy presentation in the meeting, and President Donald Trump himself participated by phone.[38] Trump made false claims at the meeting alleging unfairness in the election process and saying he should be declared the winner. "This election was rigged, and we can't let that happen. This election has to be turned around because we won Pennsylvania by a lot and we won all these swing states by a lot," he said.[39] Immediately after the meeting, Trump invited some of the Pennsylvania lawmakers, including Mastriano, to meet with him in the West Wing of the White House on the same day.[39]

The Republican leadership in the Pennsylvania legislature did not attend Trump's White House meeting, and all those who did participate initially refused to discuss what happened at the meeting.[39]

On November 27, Mastriano and three other state senators announced that they would introduce a resolution to permit the state legislature to appoint delegates to the Electoral College instead of following the results of the presidential vote in the state. The proposed resolution, as circulated in a memorandum seeking additional co-sponsorships, alleges that "officials in the Executive and Judicial Branches of the Commonwealth infringed upon the General Assembly's authority by unlawfully changing the rules governing the November 3, 2020 election in the Commonwealth", and declares, "based on the facts and evidence presented and our own Board of Elections data, that the Presidential election held on November 3, 2020, in Pennsylvania is irredeemably corrupted".[40][41]

On the same day (November 27), Mastriano's personal Twitter account was briefly suspended, leading Donald Trump to accuse Twitter of bias. Trump tweeted "Wow! Twitter bans highly respected Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano after he did a great job of leading a hearing on the 2020 Election fraud. They and the Fake News, working together, want to SILENCE THE TRUTH. Can't let that happen. This is what Communist countries do!".[42] Mastriano sent a message from his official account saying "This censorship is unacceptable in America. A nation that I served for most of my adult life. The point of Twitter suspending this personal account is to prevent me from posting to my Senate account – to silence our voice."[42] His personal account was restored within a few hours, and Twitter said "This account was mistakenly suspended for perceived violations of our impersonation policy. This was an error. We have immediately reversed the decision and the account has been reinstated."[42]

It was then reported on November 29 that Mastriano, who had participated in the meeting with Trump, had left the meeting abruptly upon learning that he had tested positive for COVID-19 infection.[38] In addition to Mastriano himself, Mastriano's son and a friend of his son, who also attended the White House meeting, tested positive as well.[38] All participants of the meeting had been administered a rapid test for the virus as part of the White House health protocol, but the results of the test were not provided to them until they were already in the meeting in the West Wing.[38] It was also reported that Mastriano had not worn a mask during the Gettysburg public meeting that day, which had lasted more than four hours, and all but a few of the other participants were also not wearing masks at the meeting.[38][43] Some of the participants had ridden in a large van from the Gettysburg meeting to the White House meeting, while Mastriano, his son and his son's friend had driven together in a separate car.[38]

Another Pennsylvania state senator, Judy Ward, who sat next to Mastriano during the public meeting he had organized, tested positive for COVID-19 within five days after the meeting.[37][44][45]

After acknowledging that he had testing positive for the virus on his Facebook page on November 30, Mastriano said that his case was "pretty mild",[46] and he appeared that day on The Eric Metaxas Show, with Donald Trump on the phone, supporting Trump's baseless[43][47] claim that he had won the election.[48] When asked about his infection by conservative radio commentator Glenn Beck the next day, Mastriano replied "I'm feeling fantastic."[46]

Interim Pennsylvania Senate President Jake Corman said that "mistakes were made" in the conduct of the Pennsylvania public meeting, as the organizers of the meeting had allowed a large crowd to attend without following guidelines for social distancing and mask-wearing.[37] The meeting participants were also not screened for symptoms of infection.[37] Corman said "There is no penalty, but you have to review what happened, acknowledge that there were mistakes, and make sure there are policies in place so that it doesn't happen again."[37] Pennsylvania political leaders had been warned by federal officials a few days before the meeting that the state had entered the "red zone" for the percentage of positive virus test results indicating uncontrolled spreading of COVID-19 in the community, and they had been previously warned that the state was also in the "red zone" for the number of confirmed cases per capita in the state population.[34]

In the wake of the recent events, the editorial board of the York Dispatch, the local newspaper of York County, Pennsylvania, wrote an opinion article on December 2 that strongly criticized Mastriano's actions relating to the election.[49] The editorial described him as someone who "regularly spouts his love of freedom" but has a relationship to Trump that had been "exposed as nothing more than a vassal doing his master's bidding", and said his actions were that of a "craven oligarch" making a "shocking call for tyranny" in a "campaign to undercut democracy itself for a generation".[49]

Conversely, on December 6, 2020, local pastor Tyler Weidler of York Springs in Mastriano's district wrote to the Gettysburg Times that "On Election Day, I had the joy of helping his campaign. I lost count of the number of people who told me to thank Doug personally for getting their businesses open, fighting for their jobs, and giving them hope during the worst of the shutdown. He is a hero here... I thank God for sending Doug Mastriano for such a time as this."[50]

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on December 5, 2020 that Mastriano's involvement with Trump in disputing the election results had raised his profile, and that he might become a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in the 2022 election.[51] The Beaver County Times echoed this view on December 9, saying Mastriano had "shot to the top of the list for the GOP", and quoting local Democratic strategist Mike Mikus as saying Mastriano seemed to be "aggressively angling" to position himself as a potential candidate.[52]

After participating in the event organized by Mastriano and several other events elsewhere disputing the validity of the election without wearing a mask, Giuliani tested positive for COVID-19 infection 10 or 11 days after the Pennsylvania meeting.[53]

Mastriano published an op-ed article in the York Daily Record on December 11, accusing Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, secretary Boockvar, and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania of taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to abuse and contravene Pennsylvania Act 77, an act passed on October 29, 2019, that modified the election laws in Pennsylvania. He said they "have been making up rules on the fly and unconstitutionally rewrote the law, which compromised our election".[54] Mastriano said he had joined two lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results (Texas v. Pennsylvania, which the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed on the same day for lack of standing, and Kelly v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania U.S. Representative Mike Kelly, which the U.S. Supreme Court had rejected three days prior to Mastriano's article).[54]

Mastriano helped organize bus rides for Trump supporters to the protest which challenged the Electoral College results in Washington, D.C.[55] During the protest, Mastriano said he and his wife left the rally area when it turned violent, which he called "unacceptable." Democratic colleagues have called for his resignation, saying senators must be held to a higher standard than others.[56]

On the morning of January 13, Mastriano wrote on Twitter and Facebook, "Please do not participate in rallies or protests over the next ten days". "Let's focus on praying for our nation during these troubling times."[57]

Mastriano's first book, Alvin York: A New Biography of the Hero of the Argonne (ISBN 978-0813145198), was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2014.[58] He conducted twelve years of research for the book.[59] In all, Mastriano reportedly spent 2,000 hours doing research on Sergeant Alvin York, including 1,000 hours studying archives in the United States and various parts of Germany including Stuttgart, Freiburg, Potsdam, Rottweil, and Ulm,[60] and another 1,000 hours of field research in the Argonne Forest of France to locate where York fought during the Meuse–Argonne offensive of World War I. His team uncovered thousands of artifacts related to York's battle of October 8, 1918. Along with research, the book incorporates forensic study and military terrain analysis.[58]

Mastriano's book on York received the 2015 William E. Colby Award of the William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium at Norwich University (an award for a first published work of a military topic author),[1] the Army Historical Foundation Award, the US Army War College Madigan Award and the 2015 Crader Family Book Prize in American Values.[61][62]

Several archeologists and historians have raised questions about Mastriano's findings regarding the location of Alvin York's Medal of Honor actions.[63] In an introduction to Michael Kelly's Hero on the Western Front: Discovering Alvin York's Battlefield, the late Ed Bearss, former chief historian for the National Park Service, says that Kelly "identifies serious problems with [Mastriano's York Group] that compromise the validity of their claims that they had located the York sites."[64]

Brad Posey, who had initially been a member of Mastriano's team, described Mastriano's team as "A U.S. Army or Air Force officer using a very cheap-looking metal detector with no experience in metal detecting" with a "Danish Army officer [and] friend of Mastriano" and a "U.S. Civil Service employee using a very cheap-looking metal detector".[64] Posey would later leave Mastriano's team after becoming convinced that Mastriano was incorrect and would join the competing Nolan group.[64]

Lt. Col. Taylor V. Beattie, an Alvin York researcher,[65] was critical of Mastriano's lack of annotation during his research, stating "This is actually one of the things I warned Mastriano about. Somebody should be able to retrace what he did."[64] Beattie would later criticize Mastriano's team for using a bulldozer to make room for a monument, rendering any further archaeological investigation impossible, stating "Wait a minute, there's another side to it. He just bulldozed through."[64]

Other works by Mastriano include:[66]

• Thunder in the Argonne: A New History of America's Greatest Battle (ISBN 978-0813175553 )
• Project 1704: U.S. Army War College Analysis of Russian Strategy in Eastern Europe, Appropriate U.S. Response, and Implications for U.S. Landpower – Putin's Rise to Power, Military, Ukraine Crisis, as project leader for a U.S. Army War College project, 2017[67]
• Project 1721: A U.S. Army War College Assessment on Russian Strategy in Eastern Europe and Recommendations on How to Leverage Landpower to Maintain the Peace, as project leader for a U.S. Army War College project, 2017[68]
• Project 1704: A U.S. Army War College Analysis of Russian Strategy in Eastern Europe, an Appropriate U.S. Response, and the Implications for U.S. Landpower, as project leader for a U.S. Army War College project, 2015[69]
• Nebuchadnezzar's Sphinx: What Have We Learned from Baghdad's Plan to Take Kuwait?, a thesis for the School of Advanced Air Power Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, June 2002[70]
• The Civilian Putsch of 2018: Debunking The Myth of a Civil-Military Leadership Rift, a research report for the School of Advanced Air Power Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, April 2001[71]