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Doug Mastriano helps celebrate the political movement that made him at film premiere

  • Charles Thompson/PennLive
A crowd arrives to watch “The Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” a film that includes GOP Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and which screened at Christ Community Church in Lower Allen Township.

 Sean Simmers / PennLive

A crowd arrives to watch “The Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” a film that includes GOP Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and which screened at Christ Community Church in Lower Allen Township.

Sen. Doug Mastriano largely set aside his standard stump speech Saturday night to pay an homage to the latest grassroots conservative movement in Pennsylvania of which— for the moment — he’s field general as he fights with Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro to become the state’s next governor.

Gone, for this night anyway, were the Republican nominee’s regular mentions of cutting regulations on business, plunging Pennsylvania head-first into school choice, putting energy development over climate concerns, keeping men out of womens’ sports and rolling back abortion rights.

“The call to action tonight wasn’t, vote for Doug Mastriano,” explained Judah Hoover, a Landisville, Lancaster County real estate broker. “The call to action was don’t get discouraged if the venue gets canceled. Don’t get discouraged if they say bad things about you. Still go. Still organize. Still attend. Still participate in standing up for your beliefs.”

FILE – State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, a Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, takes part in a primary night election gathering in Chambersburg, Pa., Tuesday, May 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

The occasion was the premiere of a film from the production shop of Stephen Turley, a conservative author and commentator whose Web site heralds the rise of a “new conservative age” marked by people — in many countries — reasserting religion, cultures and nation against what Turley calls “the dehumanizing tendencies of secularism and globalism.”

Turley, a Delaware resident, has called “The Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” a celebration of grassroots conservatism in Pennsylvania “where defenders of faith, family and freedom are absolutely changing the political order in the Keystone State.”

In fact, the results of that movement have so far been uneven: An unrelenting pushback against Gov. Tom Wolf’s coronavirus shutdown orders ultimately resulted in a big rollback of the governor’s emergency powers; but also, a seemingly fact-blind allegiance to former President Donald J. Trump’s assertions of election fraud that may have stunted progress on legitimate election reform proposals.

For now, the movement has certainly overtaken the Republican Party – that was seen in Mastriano’s decisive win in a nine-person Republican field this spring. The question now is, can it grab enough of Pennsylvania’s political middle to deliver the governor’s office, now held by Democrats for 16 of the last 20 years.

Sean Simmers / PennLive

A crowd arrives to watch “The Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” a film that includes GOP Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and which screened at Christ Community Church in Lower Allen Township. The July 16, 2022.

A Mastriano win, provided the state Legislature stays in majority Republican control, would be a political game-changer for Pennsylvania.

The challenges were evident Saturday at Christ Community Church here — on this night serving as a house of worship to conservative themes like more parental control over schools; the need for greater election integrity and the perception that the mainstream media is a sworn enemy.

Consider:

  • Turley’s audience lustily cheered the story of Roslyn Williams, a former campaign organizer for Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams who said she was fired from her job after returning to her native Philadelphia for refusing to obey a coronavirus vaccine mandate and seemingly has disavowed the Democrats because of it.
  • They also audibly booed images of Republican legislative leaders like House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, and Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre County whom the filmmakers blasted as lacking the stomach to fight for Trump. That’s a group that Mastriano has been purposely trying to unite behind him since the fractious primary battle.

Turley’s film featured Mastriano only as part of a larger ensemble cast filled with the kinds of people that made his rise possible — Williams, the leaders of the Reopen Pa movement, or Danielle Lindemuth, an Elizabethtown school director who said she ran for office after being denied information about her child’s classroom environment.

Others profiled are Toni Shuppe, the leader of a group called Audit the Vote that began with a quest for a full forensic audit of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results; and Tabitha Valleau, a co-founder of Free PA, which led early grassroots opposition to many of Wolf’s coronavirus restrictions and is now recruiting “constitutionally conservative” candidates for state and local office.

Sean Siimmers / PennLive

A crowd arrives to watch “The Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” a film that includes GOP Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and which screened at Christ Community Church in Lower Allen Township. Pastor Joel Saint of Bowmansville talks to protesters across from the church. The July 16, 2022.

Mastriano’s soft sell Saturday night owed no doubt in part to federal Internal Revenue Service regulations that prohibit organizations that have a common non-profit tax status from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

That’s why, for example, Mastriano was introduced as the man everyone’s been waiting to hear from instead of as “your next Governor,” and the race against Shapiro was never really directly mentioned. And when he did briefly mention Shapiro in his address, it was parenthetically followed with a disclaimer like: “I’m not going political here; it’s just an observation.”

To the surprise of some attendees who attended a private meet-and-greet there was no direct appeal for contributions.

The IRS guidelines do state that some voter education activities like public forums intended to encourage people to participate in the electoral process, would not be prohibited political campaign activity if conducted in a non-partisan manner.According to Charity Navigator, Christ Community Church has had 501(c)(3) status since 1988.

But some critics were challenging whether Christ Community Church had kept to those standards Saturday night.

The trappings of the 2022 governor’s race couldn’t be missed.

Just off the church grounds, a peaceful group of 10 demonstrators greeted the attendees with signs reading “Doug Mastriano for prison,” in a possible reference to the candidate’s presence at the Jan. 6th, 2021 march on the U.S. Capitol that turned into a violent attempt to disrupt Congress’s certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election.

Mastriano has acknowledged participating in the march to the Capitol after Trump’s speech that day, but he has said he never entered the building, and never participated in any criminal acts.

Sean Simmers / PennLive

A crowd arrives to watch “The Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” a film that includes GOP Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and which screened at Christ Community Church in Lower Allen Township. A supporter cheers on the protesters outside of the church. The July 16, 2022.

The anti-Mastriano protesters were countered by a mobile Mastriano billboard driven into the site by LaVerne Brown, a Dauphin County Republican committeeman from Elizabethville, featuring two cutout characters that once graced his Country Cousins restaurant in Tower City.

“Restoring PA For Our Grandkids,” the sign read.

The kids, Rexford and Ellie, shared the stage with a stork holding a bundle labeled “the unborn” — a nod to Mastriano’s staunch anti-abortion stance.

“It’s just the direction of the country,” Brown said, in explaining his support for Mastriano, as he ticked off issues like inflation and energy prices. “We’ve got to save the country.”

And inside, there were one or two audience-led chants of “Vote for Doug!” heard through the evening.

To the degree that he did any actual campaigning Saturday night, Mastriano mostly stressed his pledge to be the best protector of individual rights and liberties that Pennsylvania has ever seen, something that he argues he proved through his battles against the 2020 pandemic rules. It’s his way of building the proverbial big tent.

“We might not agree on all the issues and don’t need to agree on all the issues,” Mastriano told the crowd. “But we do share common cause in the basic belief that each of us has value, each of us has certain God-given rights, and they should never be trampled upon.

“This is not something for people to fear what we’re seeing here,” he added later. “It’s a people’s movement. We’re a Constitutional Republic, and you get the last say.”

Democrats on the other hand, he argued, are led by a brand of leaders who “need you to pay your taxes and shut up, and just comply.”

Sharing the spotlight with Turley’s multi-platform media, Turley Talks, had its plusses and minuses, from a purely political standpoint.

Mastriano got a big crowd — the film’s producers said they had sold 1,200 seats — both on the main stage and in a more intimate, pre-screening meet-and-greet for VIP seatholders. The downside? Because of a lengthy plug for Turley Talks right after the film, probably a third of the audience left before the candidate ever took the stage.

Mastriano clearly tried to keep his tone appropriate not only for a church, but also for a crowd predominantly made up of hard-core supporters who need no persuasion — they know where he stands on the major issues of the day — but encouragement and appreciation could renew their spirit.

And, he cautioned his team, the rules of engagement won’t always be fair.

“It’s really disheartening that the left, they get away with so much,” Mastriano said at one point in his speech. “They get so much dark money from all these sources. Like Josh Shapiro…. Thirteen million dollars (in his campaign accounts). Nobody scrutinizes his list but they scrutinize my list, and they go after those businesses that give to Republicans to get them to chicken out and stop giving….

“It’s so important that we have courage,” Mastriano said.

Some reached after Saturday’s event said they believe they’re starting to find it.

“People are becoming more courageous. And they’re tired of things being the way they are. They’re tired of being muzzled” Lower Paxton Township resident Lynnette Parr told PennLive after Saturday’s screening. “Especially women, and that excites me. As a conservative woman, we need to be using our voices.”

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