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In Pennsylvania's gubernatorial race, Democratic attorney general Josh Shapiro is out with a new attack ad, accusing his opponent, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, for his campaign's relationship with the right-wing website, Gab.
Mastriano's campaign paid $5,000 to Gab for “advertising consulting,” NBC News confirmed last month. It's the same social networking site used by the shooter who killed 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 to post anti-Semitic remarks.
Shapiro's new ad highlights the ties between the two, intoning that, "minutes before Jews were killed at this synagogue, the murderer posted his hate-filled plan on the same site. Now, one candidate in America, Doug Mastriano, is paying thousands of dollars to this website to recruit supporters."
According to AdImpact, the commercial brings Shapiro's ad spending to over $12 million in the general election, with most of those ads attacking Mastriano for his extreme views and using the slogan, "Doug Mastriano: Way too extreme for Pennsylvania."
Mastriano, on the other hand, has spent nothing on traditional TV advertising in the general election. AdImpact, an ad tracking firm, hasn't tracked any creatives and hasn't tracked any TV ad spending, either. So far in 2022, Shapiro has raised over $12 million to add to his existing coffers, while Mastriano has raised just over $700,000.
Mastriano's candidacy was opposed by establishment Republicans in the state who scrambled to find a candidate that would appeal to a general electorate more than Mastriano. But, Mastriano won in a landslide, beating out several other Republican primary candidates.
Since then, though, Shapiro's been blasting Mastriano on the airwaves.