Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor who has pushed Donald Trump’s election lies, said Monday that he had appointed Trump’s former campaign lawyer as a senior legal adviser to his own campaign.
The lawyer, Jenna Ellis, endorsed Mastriano in the state’s contested Republican primary, campaigned with Mastriano and hosted Mastriano on her podcast, where he once discussed how to overturn Trump’s defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Ellis, who also promoted Trump’s election lies, was with Mastriano the night he won his gubernatorial primary and, speaking on her podcast last month, said, “I like to say that Doug Mastriano is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania.”
The decision to bring on Ellis indicates Mastriano, who was endorsed by Trump, has little interest in moderating his gubernatorial campaign ahead of the general election in Pennsylvania. If Mastriano were to win in the fall, he would shape how elections are conducted in the pivotal battleground state — where the governor appoints the secretary of state, who oversees how elections are run. Mastriano has pledged to take the extraordinary step of requiring people to “re-register” to vote — a move that flatly violates federal law, constitutional law scholars say — and decertifying certain voting machines.
