HARRISBURG - With vote counting underway in Pennsylvania’s primary, some Republican Party officials are twisted in knots over the possibility of nominating a GOP candidate for governor many see as too far to the right to win statewide this fall.

Doug Mastriano, a retired U.S. Army colonel and state senator since 2019, has led polls while spending a fraction of the money that some of the other eight candidates listed on the Republican primary ballot have spent.

Polls closed at 8 p.m., except in Berks County, where a judge ordered an extension because of technical issues with electronic pollbooks in several precincts. In Allegheny County, Republicans were asking a judge for an extension because of ballot shortages in certain precincts.

Mastriano recently won the endorsement of Donald Trump after working with the former president to overturn his loss in 2020’s election in the presidential battleground state and helping spread Trump’s lies that widespread voter fraud cost him victory. Many party officials urged Trump not to endorse Mastriano, fearing he cannot win over the moderate voters necessary to prevail in politically divided Pennsylvania.

Democrats, meanwhile, were united behind the state’s two-term elected attorney general, Josh Shapiro. He is uncontested on the primary ballot after wrapping up the endorsement of the state party and its top allies, including the AFL-CIO, and raising more than $20 million since early 2021.

Shapiro helped cement his reputation with a landmark grand jury investigation into child sexual abuse coverups inside Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses and defending Pennsylvania’s 2020 election result against attempts in court to overturn it by Trump and his allies.

Shapiro tested positive for COVID-19, his campaign said Tuesday. He was experiencing mild symptoms and was isolating at home, it said.

Mastriano and Shapiro are vying for the right to succeed Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who is constitutionally term-limited after entering office in 2015. The winner in the fall general election is likely to share power with a Republican-led Legislature, where entrenched GOP majorities have controlled the floors for nearly all of the past three decades.

Mastriano has insisted to supporters that he is not a far-right candidate and that his platforms - including eliminating mail-in voting, expanding gun rights, banning abortion and banishing school property taxes - enjoy broad support.

Rather, he says Democrats - including President Joe Biden - are far-left radicals while the Republican “swamp” is trying to defeat him. Shapiro’s campaign, meanwhile, is running a TV ad portraying Mastriano as extreme and saying that if Mastriano wins, “it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.”

Mastriano represents a heavily Republican state Senate district based in Franklin County on Pennsylvania’s southern border with Maryland.

Republican voters had to choose from among nine names on the ballot for governor, even though two - Jake Corman and Melissa Hart - said they had ended their campaigns and endorsed former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta as part of a last-ditch attempt to help defeat Mastriano.

Barletta picked up a number of endorsements by current and former Republican officeholders, including members of Congress.

Besides Mastriano, Barletta, Corman and Hart, also on the Republican ballot for governor were: Joe Gale, a Montgomery County commissioner; Charlie Gerow, a marketing consultant and longtime conservative activist; Bill McSwain, a lawyer who was the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Philadelphia; Dave White, who runs a large plumbing and HVAC firm and is a former Delaware County councilman; and Nche Zama, a retired heart surgeon who has directed units at various hospitals in Pennsylvania.

–––

Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap–politics.

–––

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter