Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano rips crime surge: 'It's a political earthquake'
Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss how crime has impacted the race after two Wawa closures in Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania voters have a clear choice this November -- we can either choose a path of freedom and prosperity for the Commonwealth or stick with the same disastrous Democrat policies that have driven our state to the brink of despair.
This election will have monumental consequences for the people of Pennsylvania. My opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, is an ideological replica of President Joe Biden, Governor Tom Wolf, and every other establishment Democrat who has contributed toward the ongoing decline of the Keystone State.
His agenda is simple: he wants to raise taxes, expand our bloated government bureaucracy, expand harmful economic regulations, and keep our energy sector — which has the potential to be among the most productive in the nation — on its knees.
As a lifelong member of the Democrat establishment, AG Shapiro would not lift a finger to stop "progressive" extremists who are indoctrinating our children with obscene propaganda in our classrooms. He would do nothing to resist the ongoing weaponization of law enforcement against his party’s political enemies. After all, this is the same man who took Catholic nuns to court to force them to defy their religious convictions.
The economic outlook under AG Shapiro is equally bleak — he supports the destructive economic agenda of Biden and Wolf. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Shapiro was Gov. Wolf’s enforcer for the draconian government lockdowns that destroyed countless Pennsylvania businesses.
Tragically, despite being the Commonwealth’s top law enforcement officer, for the past six years, my opponent has done nothing to slow the raging wave of lawlessness and violent crime plaguing the state. Because of his failure to do his job, violent criminals are taking over our cities, drug dealers are making record profits on the streets, and car thieves are jacking vehicles in broad daylight.
Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano appears on Fox News (Fox News)
Philadelphia alone has seen 437 homicides, 1,960 shooting victims, 4,411 robberies, and a shocking 9,341 stolen cars just this year. These numbers are simply astronomical — and they continue to climb every single day.
Notably, AG Shapiro and Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman also sit on the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, which has voted to release more than 50 convicted criminals, including murderers, back on the streets.
AG Shapiro has utterly failed to do his job of maintaining law and order on our streets and keeping our communities safe. Remarkably, despite this undeniable record of embarrassing failure, AG Shapiro still believes that he deserves a promotion from Pennsylvania voters.
As I’ve told the great people of Pennsylvania during our statewide bus tour, I have a starkly different vision for the Commonwealth.
As governor, I will restore law and order on our streets by strengthening police funding, improving cooperation between police agencies, hiring more prosecutors in high-crime areas, implementing tougher punishments for violent criminals and repeat offenders, and much more. I promise: Under my watch, never again will a repeat child predator be released back onto the streets to hurt more children.
I will also rebuild Pennsylvania’s economy by reducing the size of the state government, slashing harmful business regulations, shrinking the bureaucracy, eliminating the property tax, reducing the gas tax, and lowering the corporate net income tax rate to attract business to the commonwealth.
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At the same time, I will unleash our energy sector by pulling Pennsylvania out of Gov. Wolf's disastrous "Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative"—a leftist scheme designed to hamstring domestic energy production—and promote investment in the natural gas and coal industries. My administration will greatly simplify the permitting process and incentivize energy production across the state.
On day one, I will restore common sense to our education system by banning the Critical Race and Gender Theory Studies in Pennsylvania schools. I will make school curriculums more transparent and work to implement a statewide "Parental Rights" statute to empower Pennsylvania parents. I will also protect female student athletes by ensuring that biological males are not allowed to compete in women’s sports or use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.
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I wish there wasn’t so much at stake in this gubernatorial race. No Pennsylvanian should ever be asked to choose between hardship and prosperity, lawlessness and security, and liberty and tyranny.
And yet, thanks to Pennsylvania’s ruling elite, this is precisely what’s at stake in this election.
May we choose wisely.
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