Josh Shapiro has been governor of Pennsylvania for only a year and a half and has just finished working on his second state budget, but he has already gained national attention for some of the cases he handled as the state’s attorney general.
Shapiro is currently one of the most likely candidates to join the Democratic ticket in 2024 if President Joe Biden drops out of the race. He carries a key battleground state that has 19 electoral votes at stake.
Shapiro continued to publicly support Biden after the president’s lackluster performance in the June 27 presidential debate, telling cable news shows the next morning that Democrats should “stop worrying” and “start working.” But that hasn’t stopped speculation — which Shapiro has largely dismissed — that he’s destined for bigger things in the Democratic Party, either now or in the near future.
From a seat in the state House representing his hometown of Abington to the governor’s mansion, Shapiro built a reputation as a hard-working and skilled negotiator. And he carried that trait into his administration’s brand, using the slogan “Get S**t Done.”
“He has 20 years of government experience, so that’s a lot of experience,” said Neil Oxman, who was a consultant on Shapiro’s first campaign.
Shapiro touts the state’s uncomplicated accomplishments, such as cutting the time it takes to register a modern company from months to days and reversing the state’s reputation for sluggish government by reopening Interstate 95, a key Mid-Atlantic artery, within 12 days of a gasoline-truck crash last June that destroyed an overpass.
He also outlines grand plans for Pennsylvania’s future by reforming the higher education system, expanding training and career opportunities, and rebuilding the state’s energy economy to meet carbon reduction goals while recognizing the role the fossil fuel industry will continue to play for the foreseeable future.
Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Public Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, said Shapiro’s approval ratings, his 15% victory in the 2022 gubernatorial election and his experience as attorney general make him one of the most recognizable political figures in key Democratic swing states.
“People see him as … a moderate, common-sense Democrat who tries to get things done,” Yost said, adding that his profile among Democratic leaders is also powerful.
“People wouldn’t mention his name if he hadn’t already created buzz,” Yost said. “His brand is undoubtedly strong, especially within the party, but he has the potential to appeal to a broader group of voters.”
Rising through the ranks
Shapiro was elected to the state House of Representatives in 2004 and served until 2011. During his first term in Harrisburg, Shapiro showed a knack for compromise, helping to broker a deal to get Rep. Denny O’Brien, a Republican backed by a reform alliance of Democratic and GOP lawmakers, into the speaker’s chair in 2007.
In doing so, Shapiro helped unseat Rep. John Perzel, the Philadelphia GOP boss who was later convicted of misusing state resources for campaigns. O’Brien named Shapiro co-chair of the newly formed Speaker’s Committee on Reform.
After three terms in the House, Shapiro returned to Montgomery County, where he was elected to oversee a fiscally strapped government. According to his campaign biography, Shapiro eliminated a $10 million deficit and streamlined the county’s investments to save a half-billion-dollar pension fund.
But it was as state attorney general that Shapiro began making national and international headlines. In 2018, he released the findings of a grand jury investigation that alleged widespread abuse of 1,000 children by about 300 “predator priests” in six of Pennsylvania’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses. a devastating reportShapiro said church leaders used a “systematic cover-up” for eight decades to protect the institution, moving abusers from one parish to another without disclosing their past actions.
Shapiro opposed the diocese’s proposals to establish victim compensation funds, noting that a grand jury had recommended eliminating or creating exceptions to the criminal and civil statutes of limitations for abuse and stating that the church should not be “the arbiter of its own punishment.” While the legislature eliminated the criminal statute of limitations for abuse, it was unable to complete legislation that would allow elderly victims to sue their abusers and those who allowed them to do so. In the year since the report was released, dioceses have paid $84 million to settle claims from 564 victims.
In 2019, he sued former President Donald Trump’s administration about two dozen times, including: question the “gag rule” imposing restrictions on participants in the Title X family planning program.
Shapiro too brokered the 2019 transaction between two Western Pennsylvania health care giants, UPMC and Highmark, who were at odds over the terms that would allow Highmark-insured patients to receive care in the network at UPMC facilities. Shapiro accused UPMC, the largest health care system in Western Pennsylvania, of violating the state’s charitable organization law and engaging in unfair trade practices. The two sides signed a 10-year agreement that allowed patients to keep access to the other’s services just days before the previous agreement expired.
Shapiro’s 2022 gubernatorial bid came during the same cycle that Democrat John Fetterman ran for an open state Senate seat, an election year in which pro-Trump candidates fared relatively poorly. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade months earlier, was galvanizing for many Democrats, and Shapiro’s Republican opponent, state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), was and is a staunch opponent of abortion.
Mastriano, a retired U.S. Army colonel from south-central Pennsylvania, ran on a far-right platform that included restricting abortion access and cutting funding for public schools. He also promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, said the Shapiro campaign focused on Mastriano’s weaknesses early in the campaign and didn’t let up. He also received support from more than a dozen influential Republicans including former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former Pennsylvania congressmen Charlie Dent and Jim Greenwood.
“It was a playbook of campaigns that didn’t deviate from their game plan,” Borick said, adding that Shapiro is disciplined in his message and style. “He doesn’t make a lot of unforced errors in his policies.”
His term as governor has not been without controversy. The first budget that Shapiro negotiated with the GOP-controlled Senate and Democratic-controlled House was delayed for nearly six months as the protracted battle over vouchers stretched from summer into fall. Senate Republicans blamed Shapiro for failing to win support from House Democrats, who blocked the $100 million program.
Last August, Shapiro’s office paid $295,000 in public funds to settle a state employee’s sexual harassment complaint against his longtime assistant and former legislative secretary, Mike Vereb. The terms of the agreement were made public last October.
What will he bring to the ticket?
With the blue-wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all crucial to winning the presidential election, both the Biden and Trump campaigns have spent significant time and resources in the Keystone State, with only a few points separating them in recent polls. But after the June 27 debate, a growing number of Democrats have called for Biden to drop out in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris or another candidate like Shapiro.
July 18th Poll Public Policy Polling found that the Democratic candidate Harris/Shapiro was ahead of Trump and his vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, by one point, while the Biden-Harris candidate was trailing the GOP candidate by about four points. Quinnipiac University January Poll found Shapiro with a 59% approval rating, far above the 40% approval rating Biden had in the same poll. And in 2022, Muhlenberg Poll In a hypothetical presidential election between Shapiro and Trump, the governor was leading with 11% of the vote among Pennsylvania voters.
“His resume is excellent in terms of taking the next step,” said Yost of Franklin & Marshall. “We just don’t know what that will look like.”
He added that if Shapiro were to be selected as the presidential candidate at an open Democratic convention, he would be a compelling candidate.
“He would be a top candidate, given his record and the Democrats’ need to win the Pennsylvania primary, and his ability to attract middle-of-the-road supporters, something his opponent, if he were running against Trump, would struggle to do,” Yost said.
While voters in Arizona or Wisconsin may never have heard his name, Shapiro’s style of politics resonates well with public opinion across the country, Borick said.
“Pennsylvania … is a swing state for a reason,” Borick said. “It has one of the largest rural populations in the country, a large urban population and growing suburbs. It reflects the national landscape of American life.”
