Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service: Pennsylvania Republicans tried to stop Doug Mastriano. But first they followed him.

Doug Mastriano first burst onto the national scene on Nov. 25, 2020, when he led a hearing in Gettysburg during which aggrieved Republican voters, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump himself aired baseless allegations of fraud in the presidential election.

But Mastriano, a GOP state senator from Franklin County, couldn’t have pulled that off by himself: A colleague, State Sen. Dave Argall, let Mastriano use the panel he chaired to host the hearing.

It was a harbinger of things to come.

For weeks leading up to Mastriano’s victory Tuesday in the Republican primary for Pennsylvania governor, GOP insiders scrambled to halt his rise, pointed fingers, and generally scratched their heads over how the party let a candidate they see as unelectable in November become the nominee.

But Mastriano didn’t stage a hostile takeover of the Pennsylvania GOP so much as the party — lawmakers, activists, and candidates — followed his lead.

Instead of denouncing or rebutting Mastriano’s conspiracy theories, Republican leaders repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, sometimes justifying their actions by pointing to the very voter concerns they had helped fan. …

“Time and time again we’ve seen Doug Mastriano put in a position of leadership that would essentially give him a platform to voice his ideas,” said Khalif Ali, head of the Pennsylvania chapter of Common Cause, which sued to block the investigation.