Within the state Republican Party, some insiders are already maneuvering for change. Ted Christian, a former Trump adviser in the state, and Andy Riley, the Pennsylvania GOP national committeeman, are both making moves to potentially replace state party chairman Lawrence Tampa, according to three Republicans familiar with the matter. the conversations, who requested anonymity. reveal private conversations. Riley said Friday, “I’m happy about my role as national commissioner.” Christian did not return messages seeking comment. But even if there is no change in leadership, interviews with more than a dozen GOP officials, strategists and party leaders revealed widespread frustration with the state party, particularly its decision not to support an alternative to gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano during of the Republican primaries. » READ MORE: Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman help Democrats defy GOP hopes for a red wave A broad swath of Pennsylvania Republicans said their losses in every major race came down to Mastriano, who took extreme positions, was uncompetitive in fundraising and did virtually no outreach beyond his base on his way to defeat. by Democrat Josh Shapiro. over 14 percentage points. “Mastriano is a huge existential problem for the GOP. We could never nominate someone like him again if we’re serious about winning,” said Mark Harris, a Pittsburgh-based GOP strategist who has advised another gubernatorial candidate, State Sen. Tempore Jake Corman. “The state party was almost invisible,” said Jeff Piccola, a former York County Republican chairman who resigned shortly after the May primary. “I’ve been around and watched the activities of the state Republican Party since the ’60s and never, ever in that time have I seen the state party so weak and ineffective.” While the GOP made gains in states like New York and Florida and still has a shot at winning the US House, it’s not thanks to Pennsylvania. Here, they lost a Senate race, a critical gubernatorial contest and three competitive congressional campaigns. The GOP may also have lost control of the state House for the first time in more than a decade. A two-thirds vote of the party would be needed to oust Tabas, the state party chairman whose term runs through February 2025, although some Republicans have speculated that he may resign. Tabas did not answer directly when asked. “This is again maybe some opportunists and some political whiners,” he said in an interview. “But there is no story here. That’s all I can say.” He said the state party spent $10 million on campaign messages, knocked on 1.5 million doors and registered 75,800 new Republican voters this year. “We worked extremely hard on behalf of all of our candidates,” he said. He added that he is now focused on the upcoming judicial and county races. But many Republicans still look back, disappointed by how they hit a major election in a year when inflation is raging and President Joe Biden has low approval ratings. Interviews with more than a dozen party officials, executives and party officials revealed many concerns, including:
Donald Trump’s continued influence, given his toxic image in parts of Pennsylvania and the way he motivates Democrats to vote. Devastating, continuous losses in the densely populated suburbs of the state. Republicans’ widespread disdain for mail-in ballots, which some party leaders said makes it harder for supporters to turn out.
“There are many reasons why Republicans should have done well and done better than we did,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.). “So it’s time to ask some very tough questions.” But the main focus has been on Mastriano, a candidate who members of both parties say has proven so toxic that he has hurt the GOP in other close races. Even before he won the gubernatorial nomination, Republicans warned he could hurt the rest of the ticket. However, he had a fervent base of support, and in the primaries he faced a host of GOP opponents who split the rest of the party’s support. Several Republicans said that in that situation, the state party should have advocated coalescing around a single alternative, though others noted that Mastriano might have prevailed anyway. He eventually walked away with the nomination with 44% of the vote. (Trump endorsed Mastriano days before the primary, when it was clear the state senator would win.) Rob Gleason, a former state GOP chairman, said the party has not recovered from not having its own support. » READ MORE: ‘It’s time for him to retire’: Some US Republicans want to sideline Trump after election defeats Mastriano’s call for a total abortion ban and his leading role in promoting election conspiracies made him a perfect foil for Democrats warning that reproductive rights and democracy were on the ballot — distracting attention from Biden and inflation. “Republicans have to face the fact that Pennsylvania is not deep blue, but it is blue in a real way,” Harris said. “To win, we have to put the best candidates on the field and we didn’t put the best candidates on the field.” Riley, the national committeeman, said in hindsight it was a “mistake” not to endorse the governor’s race, but that gubernatorial candidates pressured the state party to stay out of the race. Now, he said the party’s leadership “should have a serious, direct, confidential conversation about how to move forward in terms of fielding candidates.” Tabas also noted that none of the gubernatorial candidates sought an endorsement from the state party. “The party overwhelmingly — the leadership of the party as well, all of our leaders, the core members — voted overwhelmingly not to approve it,” Tampas said in an interview. Not every Republican said it was the state party’s fault. Some pointed to Trump’s continued, divisive influence. Others said the Supreme Court’s decision was overturned Roe v. Wade gave Democrats an unusually strong boost in a midterm election year. “You cannot blame a state party leader for what happened in this election. There are things so far out of their control,” said David Ball, Washington County GOP chairman. “To say ‘it’s all your fault’ is kind of ridiculous.” But others said that after such a poor result, the party should reconsider its position. “Something has to change. I was an officer in the military, and if you lose a battle, you have to understand why,” said Northampton County GOP Chairman Glenn Geissinger. The complaints are not all new. Tabas and the state party have faced long-standing internal criticism over the state party’s fundraising and power. The state’s primary political committee roughly doubled its Democratic counterpart’s fundraising this year. And the state GOP has little presence in the public debate, with almost no media exposure. When national Democratic figures like Biden come to Pennsylvania, it’s usually the national GOP, not the state party, that orchestrates the Republican response. After the state party sold its Harrisburg headquarters this year, several insiders saw it as a sign of weakness and financial strain, though others said it made sense given the cost of the location and the new reality of remote work. Tampas said the sale allowed the party to get out of a roughly $700,000 mortgage on a building that needed a lot of expensive repairs and move into more modern offices nearby. Meanwhile, heavy losses in suburban Philadelphia and Pittsburgh continued Tuesday, worrying Republican strategists. If they face sustained deficits in these areas, it could be extremely difficult for a Republican to win statewide. When Toomey narrowly won re-election in 2016, he won two of Philadelphia’s counties, Bucks and Chester. But with Trump as the face of the Republican Party, the suburbs have rejected Republicans and become a staple of Democratic support. Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz tried to make inroads, but the results weren’t much different. He won about 40% of the vote in the four collar counties, nearly the same share as Trump in 2020. Oz’s 245,000-vote deficit was more than four times Toomey’s 2016 loss in that area. Those counties accounted for nearly a quarter of the statewide Senate vote as Democrat John Fetterman defeated Oz. A more prosaic part of Trump’s legacy troubled many counties: the refusal of Republican voters to use mail-in ballots, a lingering effect of the former president’s unsubstantiated claims of mail-in voting fraud; “One of the issues I’m struggling with is that Republicans don’t want to embrace mail-in ballots, and people have to be realistic,” said Jackie Kulback, Cambria County Republican chairwoman. Talk of a “stolen election” isn’t helping either, said Bill Bretz, chairman of the Westmoreland County Republican Party. “We’re equally suppressing the vote we’re trying to get out when you send a message that your vote doesn’t count,” Bretz said.
