Up and down the ballot, the 2022 Republican ticket is packed with election-denying extremists, white supremacists, antisemites, and thugs. From school boards to state legislatures to governorships to the U.S. House and Senate, the extreme far-right dominates the GOP.
President Joe Biden intends to use Republican extremism as one side of the narrative in his stumping around the country for congressional candidates. ”Every step of the way,” says the messaging memo from Communications Director Kate Bedingfield and Senior Adviser Anita Dunn, “Congressional Republicans sided with the special interests—pushing an extreme MAGA agenda that costs families.” Republicans are “pushing an ultra-MAGA agenda, siding with special interests and the super-wealthy,” Biden’s team asserts.
That’s all true, but what is also true is that they are dangerous. They pose a real threat to the physical safety of teachers, librarians, health care workers, LGBTQ people, Jews, and Black and brown people, not to mention their newest targets: federal law enforcement personnel.
One prominent candidate in Pennsylvania is making sure his opponent’s connections to violent extremism are an issue in the governor’s race there, setting a great example Democratic candidates—especially in swing states—should follow.
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Josh Shapiro, the current state attorney general, is the Democratic nominee for governor and is committing more than $1 million to television ads in the state to expose Republican Doug Mastriano’s ties to Gab, the far-right social media network.
It is especially resonant for Pennsylvanians as the mass murderer who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 posted his antisemitic hate on the Gab site. Mastriano paid Gab $5,000 for “consulting” services. He also was interviewed by Gab CEO Andrew Torba, and told Torba: “Thank God for what you’ve done.”
One of Shapiro’s ads describes Gab as a “white supremacist website” where “minutes before Jews were killed at this synagogue, the murderer posted his hate-filled plan,” and highlights Mastriano’s ties to the site.
The second ad features local TV new clips about Mastriano’s payment to Gab and his ties to it, showing one anchor explaining “elected leaders and members of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community are calling out gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano’s ties to a controversial social media site.”
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That’s the kind of blunt messaging Democrats need to make everywhere, in every race. It will force incumbent Republicans to show where they stand: with the violent, racist, white supremacist thugs that have taken over the party, or with the people. It’s a question Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and every other Republican leaders needs to face.
It’s also the defining issue of this election, because it really will decide the fate of democracy.
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