Shapiro attended two private Jewish day schools in suburban Philadelphia, and he and his family are practicing Conservative Jews, members of one of a number of branches of Judaism, following kosher dietary laws and observe other Jewish practices.

Mastriano is a Christian nationalist who has a long history of making anti-Semitic comments.

On multiple occasions, Mastriano has compared political issues in the United States to the Holocaust, the genocidal slaughter during World War II of 6 million Jews and millions of other members of social groups considered unworthy of living by the Nazi regime in Germany.

Mastriano has shared posts on social media that say abortion is "so much" worse than the Holocaust. He reacted to the firing of an actor from a television show over her own comparison of abortion to the Holocaust by posting on Feb. 11, 2021: "Mandalorian star Gina Carano is absolutely correct. The Cancel Culture mob is behaving like its [sic] 1930s Germany." In June 2020 he posted a meme comparing the preservation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as a memorial and a reminder to refusing to remove statues honoring Confederate soldiers that were erected long after the Civil War.

Mastriano has also as recently as last month falsely accused George Soros, the Jewish philanthropist whose family survived the Holocaust, of working with the Nazis during the war.

Mastriano paid thousands of dollars to recruit campaign supporters through the social media website Gab, a haven for anti-Semites and neo-Nazis, including the man who will stand trial on charges of carrying out the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

Jewish leaders have condemned Mastriano for his anti-Semitism, and Shapiro has featured those criticisms in campaign ads.

Mastriano has tried to blunt the criticism by noting that he had a man who goes by the name "Pastor Don" blow a shofar, a ram's horn trumpet used in Jewish rituals, at one of his campaign events. That in itself drew criticism from Jewish groups, who decry the appropriation of Jewish ritual and symbolism by some Christians for their own purposes.

The Pennsylvania governor's race is drawing national attention as Election Day draws nearer.

Mastriano is vying to take back the governor's mansion for Republicans from term-limited Democrat Tom Wolf in this swing state, which voted for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020.

Despite the race being close at the presidential level, polling shows Shapiro with a clear lead with less than two months of campaigning left.

Shapiro has led every public poll in FiveThirtyEight's tracker, giving him an 11.3-point average lead over Mastriano.

Inside Elections, a nonpartisan political handicapping outlet, rates the race Tilt Democratic.