“It’s hard to accept the results as they are, there’s no right course but to admit, which I do, and I look at the challenges ahead of me. Josh Shapiro will be our next Governor and I ask everyone to give him a chance to lead and pray that he leads well,” Mastriano said in a statement. Shapiro said Sunday morning that his opponent had not called to concede in the race, which the Democrat won by about 14 percentage points and more than 750,000 votes. “I mean, who cares if he calls, right? He can’t pick the winner, the people pick the winner,” Shapiro told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” The far-right Republican, backed by former President Trump, had questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, touting the former president’s allegations of voter fraud and raising concerns about the election more broadly. While he conceded defeat to Shapiro on Sunday, his statement also called for reforms to Pennsylvania’s election system. “Pennsylvanians deserve to have faith in our elections. In my role as State Senator, I will do my best to help Josh Shapiro deliver this to the people of Pennsylvania, and if he does, I will be the first to recognize and applaud his accomplishment,” he wrote Mastriano. Ron Johnson calls timing of GOP Senate leadership election ‘absurd’, Jayapal sidesteps questions about leadership bids for herself, Pelosi He added that the election results should be decided “more quickly” in the future. Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate candidate who lost a much closer race to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), conceded Wednesday.
