Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano isn't appearing much in public, keeping his events exclusive and isolated, but while he's campaigning, he's using security funded by armed members with militia ties.
According to Lancaster Online, the armed security team isn't from a professional security company, but from a new evangelical church called LifeGate.
The church actively promotes political candidates who purport to be "Christian" in an effort to advance, what they call, biblical principles.
"Perhaps the most visible member of the security team is James Emery, an Elizabethtown Area School Board member who has been photographed providing security to Mastriano at numerous events over the past year, sometimes armed," said the report. "Earlier this month, Emery blocked members of the news media from entering a room in Erie where Mastriano was scheduled to speak to local business leaders."
Emery is the most active and visible members of the Lifegate, the report claims, with a November 2021 post on the church’s Facebook page calling him a licensed minister and claiming he attended the LifeGate Leadership Development School. During a May event, Emery called himself one of Mastriano's "lead" security members and during an Easter Sunday testimonial at church he cited the other four people at the church who were on the team.
“I just want to ask for prayers while there’s a few in this congregation that have joined the (Mastriano) team: Scott and Skip and Dan, myself, and Carl,” Emery said. “We’re doing security for Mastriano and it comes with a lot of weight these days.”
"Scott" is Scott Nagle, who was a regional leader of the Oath Keepers, a militia group that helped organize attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6. In photos from the April event with Nagle were Mastriano, Emery, Dan Slade, Carl Runkle and Franklin County Constable Dom Brown along with three other unidentified people.
Recently, Mastriano has dealt with a scandal around his outreach to the social media site Gab, which has become a gathering place for Christofascism ideals, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Read the full report at Lancaster Online.