Penn. GOP gubernatorial candidate wishes there were ‘Republicans like Nancy Pelosi’

Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a leading Republican candidate for governor, can’t stop talking about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I wish we had some Republicans who were like [Pelosi],” Mastriano said at his fundraiser in Bucks County on March 23. “Would be nice.”

It’s an odd refrain for Mastriano — a well-known QAnon promoter and 2020 election conspiracy theorist who attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riots — but he has brought up his admiration for Pelosi in multiple speeches during campaign events this month. 

“Republicans all reach across the aisle,” he said during a speech in Quaker Valley that was livestreamed on Facebook last Sunday. “I don’t see Nancy Pelosi caring about reaching across the aisle. You know, I admire her tenacity.”

During the Bucks County Fundraiser speech, he recalled meeting Pelosi while he was a colonel in the army. “She’s like, tiny. Like a puff of wind can knock her over,” he said. “But despite her stature, what have you, she’s tough as a tiger for her party.”

Mastriano’s fixation with Pelosi is puzzling. He has a long history of amplifying QAnon and election conspiracy theories, peddling COVID-19 disinformation and anti-vaxxer lies and endorsing far-right policies such as Texas’s near-total abortion ban. 

He also spent thousands of dollars organizing a bus ride from Pennsylvania to D.C. for the Jan. 6 riots. He was subpoenaed in February by the congressional committee looking into the insurrection — though nobody knows if he’s actually complied yet.