Sen. Doug Mastriano adds Jenna Ellis to his Pennsylvania campaign team

Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee and state Sen. Doug Mastriano announced the addition of a Trump-world star to his general election campaign team Monday.

Jenna Ellis, who became a prominent member of the legal team that, both in and outside courtrooms, tried to put a legal veneer on former President Donald J. Trump’s claims that election fraud denied him a second-term in office in late 2020, has been named a senior legal adviser to Mastriano’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign.

“This race is the most important in the country,” Ellis said in a statement released by Mastriano’s campaign. “As Governor, Doug Mastriano will reinstate personal and economic freedom in Pennsylvania, and he’ll restore integrity to our elections. I’m honored to do whatever I can to help him make that happen.”

It was not immediately clear what precise role Ellis will take in the Mastriano campaign, but it is already evident that a key part of Mastriano’s effort will be monitoring the fairness of the election process itself. Mastriano is running against Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Party’s nominee, to succeed Gov. Tom Wolf in 2023.

Speaking Saturday with California-based conservative commentator Ben Stein, the Franklin County Republican said he’s “very much” worried about fraud in this year’s election.

“I need a big win. I need about five points (as a buffer) to make up for the fraud and cheating that’s going to happen,” Mastriano predicted.

Part of getting there, he said, will be making sure that all of his potential supporters turn out.

But Mastriano also said a fully-staffed complement of poll watchers will be critical. Mastriano said precinct poll watchers - as on-the-ground eyes and ears from the Mastriano campaign that would be in place to make sure the state’s election laws are being followed to a ‘T’ - helped Republican Glenn Youngkin win the governor’s race in Virginia last year.

Mastriano said Youngkin’s campaign had more than 95 percent of that state’s polling place staffed and he looking to replicate that in Pennsylvania’s general election.

“That’s how we blunt some of the cheating and some of the chaos” on Election Day, Mastriano said.

Ellis - who rose to prominence in political circles as a defender of former President Trump during the first impeachment case against him and later served as a senior legal advisor to Trump’s 2020 re-election effort - appeared to be more of a public relations operative than litigator for Trump’s campaign in the wake of that election.

Even so, her work on the former president’s behalf has made her the target of an ethics complaint filed with the office that regulates professional conduct by attorneys in her home state of Colorado.

That complaint, by the bipartisan legal watchdog group the States United Democracy Center, asserts Ellis made “numerous public misrepresentations” while traveling the country with Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani after the 2020 election in an effort to persuade local lawmakers that the voting had been marred by fraud.

One of those appearances came in Gettysburg, at a Nov. 25, 2021 Pennsylvania state Senate hearing convened by Mastriano.

The States United complaint also stated Ellis helped Trump in an “unsuccessful and potentially criminal effort” to stave off defeat by writing two memos arguing that then-Vice President Mike Pence could ignore the electoral votes in key swing states, including Pennsylvania, that were pledged to Biden based on false claims of “disputes” between dual slates in those states.

Ellis previously endorsed Mastriano in the Republican primary campaign.

“The talent, experience, and legal expertise Jenna brings will be an important factor in helping us defeat Josh Shapiro and the extreme Democrat agenda in November,” Mastriano said in Monday’s release.