The effort to bar candidates from the ballot on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment will include those seeking state governorships as well as federal office. The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania’s chief executive is now at the front line of that challenge.  

The widening use of the Disqualification Clause came into focus as the group that has spearheaded this effort against federal officeholders, Free Speech for People, penned a letter to the acting secretary of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth, Leigh Chapman, a Democrat. 

The letter urged Ms. Chapman to disqualify the Republican candidate for governor, Douglas Mastriano. In the letter, dated March 25, Free Speech demands that Ms. Chapman “disqualify State Senator Douglas Mastriano from appearing on the ballot for election to any state office in Pennsylvania.” 

According to the latest polling from Franklin and Marshall, Mr. Mastriano is in primary pole position in the race for the GOP nod to succeed the current governor, Tom Wolf, who is term-limited. Mr. Mastriano leads his nearest competitor, William McSwain, by three percentage points among Republican voters.   

While qualifications for state office do not generally fall under Constitutional purview, Free Speech maintains that Mr. Mastriano has “broken an oath to support the Constitution by engaging in an insurrection against the United States” and is thus ineligible for any office, state or federal. 

Free Speech for People makes two arguments for why Mr. Mastriano, a supporter of President Trump, should be blocked from running in the May 17 Republican primary. The first is that he “repeatedly sought to discredit, overturn, or subvert Pennsylvania’s election results” by refusing to accept President Biden’s 2020 victory in the Keystone State. 

The second relates to Mr. Mastriano’s activities on January 6, 2021.  Free Speech for People alleges he “organized transportation for people to travel from Pennsylvania to Washington D.C. to participate in the insurrection,” and spent $3,000 from his political action committee’s coffers to reserve a fleet of buses for Pennsylvanians to attend the “Stop the Steal”rally.

Furthermore, Free Speech maintains that Mr. Mastriano enjoyed VIP status at the “Stop the Steal” rally, and then “rode a golf cart and marched to the Capitol,” bypassing police barriers and confronting officers along the way. 

Mr. Mastriano responds that he “did not enter the Capitol building, walk on the Capitol steps or go beyond police lines.” He has been subpoenaed by the congressional January 6 committee but has not yet responded to that summons.

Free Speech points to Mr. Mastriano’s service as an Army officer in the 1980s to assert that as “an experienced military veteran” who has studied and written on “hybrid warfare,” he should have been “specifically aware of the consequences that his actions and Trump’s actions were likely to have on fomenting and guiding the insurrection.”

Citing Pennsylvania’s state constitution, Free Speech for People asserts that Ms. Chapman’s duty to review “the sufficiency of nomination petitions, certificates, and papers” for all statewide candidates means that he must strike Mr. Mastriano from the ballot. 

Likely previewing a future phase in the disqualification effort, Free Speech has requested a meeting with Ms. Chapman to discuss not only its request to disqualify Mr. Mastriano in 2022, but Mr. Trump in 2024. 

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Correction: Tom Wolf is the governor of Pennsylvania. An earlier edition misspelled his name.