[I suspect Trump was behind longtime supporter Lou Barletta in that race, but he wouldn’t endorse him because Barletta wasn’t polling well enough to give any indication that he’d win.]
People have criticized Mastriano for not doing enough pound the pavement, retail politics end of campaigning. But compared to Barletta, my impression is that Mastriano was a workaholic. It’s not clear that Barletta was up to the workload of running around Pennsylvania for months on end *and* fundraising.
I don’t know how active Mastriano was on the campaign trail. I’ve criticized him for running the most awful, putrid campaign in the nation.
I should give him some credit, though. He exceeded my expectations. I predicted months ago that he’d be lucky to get 40% of the vote.