PUTTING THE SCRAP IN SCRAPPLE — The shock over the GOP's Pennsylvania predicament continues to ripple across the party, leaving state Republican strategists and officials nervous and despairing on the eve of Tuesday's primary. The prospect that the party might blow its chances in a key industrial swing state this fall by nominating far-right election deniers is very real. In the GOP primary for governor, state Sen. Doug Mastriano has held a comfortable lead in recent polls, while conservative commentator Kathy Barnette has surged to within just a few percentage points of Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick in the Senate primary. It shouldn't be a surprise. There are few states as deeply infected as Pennsylvania by Donald Trump's election fraud lie. The idea of a rigged election was nurtured and fanned by Pennsylvania congressional and state legislators from the moment on Nov. 7, 2020, that the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of the state. — After Biden's 82,000-vote victory, GOP state Rep. Russ Diamond was among those working with attorney John Eastman in December 2020 in an effort to retabulate the state's popular vote — and throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots — in order to show Trump with a lead, newly unearthed emails reveal. — Congressman Scott Perry, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, was the behind-the-scenes facilitator who connected Department of Justice lawyer Jeffrey Clark — a Philadelphia native — with Trump. The result was discussion of a plan to have DOJ inform Georgia lawmakers of a voter fraud investigation that could invalidate the state's Electoral College results. — Some of the most memorable, tragi-comic events of the post-election period also occurred in Pennsylvania. The televised, November 2020 public hearing featuring Rudy Giuliani that Trump phoned in to? It took place in a Gettysburg hotel ballroom. The clown show that was Four Seasons Landscaping? Philadelphia. — 8 of the 9 Republicans in Pennsylvania's House delegation voted to overturn the state's election results. Mastriano wasn't just one of the lawmakers involved in perpetrating the lie driving these events. He was arguably the main promoter and certainly a leading force in trying to overturn the election results by any means necessary. He pushed for an unorthodox, private-company ballot audit in Pennsylvania's Fulton County and helped organize the Gettysburg event. He showed up in Maricopa County, Ariz., the western proving ground for election conspiracy theories. Mastriano was in contact with Trump, too. He met with the former president in New York and was lauded by Trump in a statement last year hailing him by name as a "great patriot." Pennsylvania's stamp was also all over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol: close to 70 Pennsylvania residents were arrested in connection with the insurrection, the third highest number in the nation after Texas and Florida. Both Perry and Mastriano have been subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the events of that day. Mastriano and Barnette were in D.C. that day for the Trump rally that preceded the violence (both say they never entered the Capitol). They also had organized buses to transport protesters to Washington. Among those at the rally was Teddy Daniels, who is on the ballot Tuesday as Mastriano's endorsed candidate for lieutenant governor. Pennsylvania's journey down this rabbit hole is, in no small part, rooted in a resentment familiar to many states: longstanding rural and small-town animus toward the big city — in this case, Philadelphia. This animosity explains why nearly all of the Pennsylvania lawmakers pushing to overturn the election results hailed from outside the Delaware Valley. Mastriano, who represents a south central Pennsylvania district, was one of them. It's a matter of faith to Pennsylvanians like him that Philadelphia is a breeding ground for electoral fraud. Trump himself referred to this in his first debate with Biden, tossing out a falsehood about poll watchers being blocked from observing the first day of in-person early voting in Philadelphia. "Bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things," Trump said. Giuliani picked up on the thread a few weeks after Election Day, calling Philadelphia a "corrupt city" where election fraud is "as frequent as getting beaten up at a Philadelphia Eagles football game." Mastriano has channeled this sentiment to the brink of the Republican nomination for governor, and Barnette isn't far behind in her longshot bid for Senate. And it's precisely why GOP insiders are so panicked on primary election eve. In Pennsylvania, successful Republican statewide candidates win by staying competitive in the populous southeast, in the Philly suburbs. But after working tirelessly to overturn or invalidate the votes there, the two seem to have made themselves largely unviable in November. In the worst case scenario for the GOP, it could cost the party the governorship and a Senate seat that's critical to winning back the Senate majority. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at cmahtesian@politico.com, on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie.
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