Democrat Josh Shapiro wins Pennsylvania governor's race, NBC News projects
- Democrat Josh Shapiro won his bid for governor of Pennsylvania, NBC News projected.
- He defeated Doug Mastriano, a Trump-endorsed Republican who amplified the former president's false claims of a stolen 2020 election.
- Shapiro served as Pennsylvania's attorney general.
Josh Shapiro won the Pennsylvania governor's race, defeating Republican Doug Mastriano and keeping the swing-state office in Democratic hands, NBC News projected.
Shapiro led Mastriano by about 11 percentage points with roughly 64% of the vote in, according to NBC.
He will succeed Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who reached the commonwealth's limit of two consecutive four-year terms.
Shapiro won after enjoying a significant financial and polling advantage throughout the race. The Democrat raised and spent around $44 million for his campaign, more than 10 times Mastriano, who spent less than $4 million.
Shapiro led polls consistently in the lead-up to Election Day. He held a more than 10 percentage point edge over Mastriano in an average of polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight.
The Democrat Shapiro has served as Pennsylvania's attorney general since 2017 and was previously a state representative. He ran on issues such as protecting abortion access, defeating false claims about fraud in the 2020 election and reforming the criminal justice system to address inherent biases.
The Republican Mastriano is a retired U.S. Army colonel and state senator in Pennsylvania's 33rd District. Endorsed by former President Donald Trump, Mastriano campaigned on plans to fight violent crime, enforce stronger borders, implement anti-abortion policies and act on Trump's false claims of election fraud.
He was on the grounds of the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Mastriano amplified Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and made the repeal of Pennsylvania's Act 77 central to his campaign promises. Act 77 is the voting law that allows for no-excuse mail-in voting in Pennsylvania. Since the presidential election, the commonwealth has been a central battleground for the claims of election fraud.
Mastriano's priorities, as listed by his campaign, focused on many of the cultural issues Republicans tried to leverage to increase turnout this year. He said that he wanted to reverse Covid-era policies under Wolf, and added that he planned to fight "medical tyranny" and immediately end all vaccine requirements and mask mandates when he entered office. He also touted plans to protect Second Amendment rights, ban critical race theory teaching, and bar trans women from women's locker rooms and sports.
Shapiro, meanwhile, assured supporters that, as governor, he would veto any restrictions on mail-in voting and appoint a like-minded secretary of state to affirm that protection. Shapiro also said he would create automatic and same-day voter registration for Pennsylvanians.