HARRISBURG, Pa. — The inauguration ceremony for Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro had one notable no-show on Tuesday: State Senator Doug Mastriano, who lost to Shapiro in the race for governor last November.
Mastriano, a Republican, has represented District 33 (which Adams County and portions of Franklin, Cumberland, and York counties) since 2019. He lost November's gubernatorial race to Shapiro, who captured 56 percent of the vote to Mastriano's 42 percent.
He conceded the election to Shapiro on Nov. 13.
On Tuesday, the communications office for Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman confirmed that Mastriano was not in Harrisburg for Shapiro's inauguration, stating the senator was on personal leave.
Shapiro, the former Pennsylvania Attorney General, is scheduled to take the oath of office and formally take over as Pennsylvania's 48th governor at a ceremony in the state Capitol Building on Tuesday.
Shapiro is succeeding outgoing Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who was term-limited, and will be the first governor of Pennsylvania since 1966 to be elected to succeed a member of his own party.
Mastriano, a former colonel who served in the U.S. Army from 1988 to 2017, campaigned on his opposition to Covid-19 measures and pledged to defend election integrity while in office. He claimed that voting fraud was prevalent in the 2020 election, when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election.
He was also present at the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, but reportedly did not enter the building.
Shapiro enjoyed a comfortable double-digit lead over Mastriano in most pre-election polling, and the final result on Nov. 8 bore that out.