HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor, has made a campaign staple out of the allegation that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s policy of readmitting COVID-19 patients from hospitals to nursing homes caused thousands of deaths — a baseless claim for which no investigator or researcher has provided any evidence. In fact, layers of inspections by researchers have pointed to entirely something different — nursing home employees ushering in the virus every day — while investigators found administrators flouting staffing requirements or infection-control procedures. Further, no Pennsylvania nursing home has leveled any such claim like Mastriano’s, and a national nursing home trade association has agreed with the findings of researchers who say the spread of the virus in nursing homes directly correlated to community spread. Mastriano, a state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel who won the Republican nomination while trafficking in conspiracy theories, seemingly came out of nowhere to become a rising force in right-wing politics primarily by leading anti-shutdown rallies in the pandemic’s early days.