Doug Mastriano’s Lunatic Appeal

One afternoon in early September, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, approached me with his hand out. “How are you doing, brother?” he asked.

We were at the Muddy Run Tavern in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, a pleasant-looking town of red-brick buildings that lies just about dead center in the state. Roughly 70 people had gathered to meet the candidate. These sparsely populated woodlands are Pennsylvania’s own flyover country, and they’re Trump territory. In each of his presidential runs, he captured more than 73 percent of the votes in Huntingdon County.

I told Mastriano that I was good, but that he should know I was a writer and was hoping to interview him. He emitted a surprising little squeak of a laugh and immediately turned back to his crowd of supporters. He doesn’t talk with the reporters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh who usually follow statewide races, or even with local journalists. Normally at events he’s surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards; at one point, his detail included a former leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia. It occurred to me that, for him, this was a rare close brush with a mainstream journalist.

Mastriano, a 58-year-old retired Army colonel, is a Donald Trump acolyte and a fierce election denier. He’s on the tall side, maybe a shade over six feet, and athletic-looking. At the tavern he was dressed informally—baggy green pants and a blue polo shirt and blue hat, both with Army insignias. He moved from table to table with a big smile, lingering for conversations, shaking hands with the men and giving some of the women respectful hugs.

And then he addressed the crowd. He brought up a “dirty-laundry list” of issues that,