How bad do you have to be for the Party leaders in your state to publicly disown you? The Republican gubernatorial candidates for the states that straddle the Mason-Dixon line can tell you.
In Pennsylvania, retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey was noticeable unwilling to endorse GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, a January 6th insurrectionist who vowed to make Pennsylvania “the Florida of the North,” which is a significant step down for the Keystone State.
At a campaign event for New Jersey Republican Mehmet Oz, who’s running to replace him in the Senate, Toomey was asked if he was also endorsing Mastriano, WFMZ Allentown reports. Toomey demured, saying he was going to “stick to the Senate race and a handful of House races.” (When Oz was asked, he replied he had no upcoming campaign events planned with Mastriano.)
In Maryland, the Republican leader in the state senate, Bryan Simonaire, refused to endorse the state’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, Dan Cox, a controversial figure even on the Right, the Baltimore Sun reports.
who not only believes in controlling everyone’s reproductive rights, giving every fetus a gun, and making sure every fetus lives on a dying planet, but he also is an election denier and QAnon conspiracy theorist who attended a Q event in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in June 2022.