Governor Josh Shapiro has a track record of winning many elections in Pennsylvania.
As a candidate for attorney general, he was one of the few Democrats to win statewide in 2016 and won more votes than President Joe Biden in 2020. In 2022, he extended the Democratic lead from Allegheny to Schuylkill and became governor by a margin of 14 percentage points, surpassing Biden’s 2020 victory in all 67 Pennsylvania counties.
That track record has led some Democrats to hypothesize that if she were on the ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris would have a much better chance of winning Pennsylvania.
Even some Republicans admit that if Shapiro were to become the vice presidential candidate, it would be harder to win the election in the state.
“Of all the people she could have picked, he would be the one who would pose the biggest challenge because people are familiar with his name,” said Bill Bretz, chairman of the Westmoreland County Republican Party.
But as political pundits look toward a landslide Shapiro victory in 2022, While his victory was grounds for him to become Harris’ vice presidential candidate, those predictions often overlooked the person he would face: far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin).
Shapiro quickly defeated the Democrats, avoiding the gubernatorial primary, and then defeated Mastriano by promising to strengthen voting rights, reach out to the other side of the barricade, and Roe v. Wade, was overturned that he would protect abortion rights. He built a sturdy coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents that other Democrats look to as a model for their own state elections. He built a reputation as a strategic and powerful activist, never losing an election since he first ran for student government.
Shapiro has neither confirmed nor denied that he is interested in being Harris’ running mate and said Tuesday that he has not yet been asked to submit verification paperwork. Shapiro is reportedly one of several Democrats Harris is vetting as a potential vice presidential candidate.
Democrats know they need to win Pennsylvania if they want to win the White House, and Shapiro’s 2022 winning record — along with his statewide victories as attorney general in 2016 and 2020 — is impressive. But his latest and greatest triumph can’t be separated from its critical context: He was running against Mastriano, an underfunded, fringe candidate whom Republicans themselves tried to stop from winning the 2022 primary because they feared Shapiro would blow him away in the general election.
“It was almost an experiment in what happens when someone runs a full campaign and has a strong candidate and the other side doesn’t run a campaign at all,” said Stephen Medvic, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College.
Weak opponent
Mastriano barely campaigned in 2022. He didn’t speak to most media, wasn’t backed by major GOP donors and spent just $7 million. Shapiro, meanwhile, broke spending and fundraising records, spending more than $73 million to secure the governor’s mansion.
Mastriano also entered the general election with a fanatical following and unpopular views: He began building his grassroots base in 2020 by leading an effort to overturn the election in Pennsylvania and speaking out against COVID-19 shutdowns. He was on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and has extreme views on abortion — both of which were major issues in the 2022 election.
And the Republican establishment knew Mastriano would lose.
Sam DeMarco III, the Allegheny County GOP chairman, was behind the effort to unite behind a single Republican candidate in the crowded, nine-person primary, knowing that Mastriano was a tender candidate. Internal GOP polls at the time showed Shapiro defeating Mastriano by a significant margin.
“Although Democrats look fondly at Shapiro because he won by 14 points, the victory wasn’t as impressive as it seems,” DeMarco said. “He wasn’t the election monster some of his supporters like to believe.”
Shapiro’s Path to Victory
With his eye on the governorship for the years leading up to 2022, Shapiro managed to clear the field well before the Democratic primary.
Shapiro won vast numbers of independent and Republican voters in 2022. He won about 280,000 more votes than Democratic candidate John Fetterman in the U.S. Senate race, indicating that many voters split their ballots.
His campaign was held up as a model for how other Democrats could reach voters in places where Trump won.
In an interview with CNN days after his victory, Shapiro said, “Look, we went everywhere. We planted ourselves in rural, urban, suburban communities. We engaged voters … regardless of party label. We reached out to constituencies that, quite frankly, had been ignored for some time.”
Some of the gains Shapiro made for Democrats were huge: He led Biden by 10 percentage points or more in more than half of the state’s 67 counties — many of them traditionally Republican — and won a larger share of the vote than the president in all of those counties.
Lisa Labarre, chairwoman of the Bradford County Democratic Party, said Shapiro was a “great campaigner” who was “organized and factual, and he knew how to talk about local issues.”
She recalled a visit to the county in 2022, when he packed the hall with people from both parties. He then outpolled Biden by 10 points.
“He would be a very good choice for her,” Labarre said of Harris. “Selfishly, I don’t want to lose him.”
While Biden’s decision to drop out of the race was largely heralded by Democrats, his exit means Pennsylvania has lost something of a hometown candidate on the ballot. Tom O’Brien, the Lancaster County Democratic chairman, said Shapiro appeals to “moderate, middle-class, working people” and could fill that void.
O’Brien, who is also a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, said that when Shapiro spoke at a party conference Monday, he noted Biden’s ties to the state.
“He emphasized that Biden is a son of Pennsylvania and we have to honor that and respect that,” O’Brien said.
Still a sturdy choice
DeMarco, of the Allegheny County Republican Party, said Harris’ progressive views would hurt her among undecided voters in Pennsylvania, but Shapiro’s popularity and name recognition could convince them to vote for her.
“I’m concerned that this could only increase voter turnout here in Pennsylvania,” DeMarco said.
Bretz, of Westmoreland County, also noted that while Shapiro would give Democrats an advantage in Pennsylvania, Republicans will still be competing primarily with Harris and her record.
“That is tempered by the fact that ‘Ms Harris has been in alignment with Joe Biden for the last four years,’” he said.
Another critical question is how much influence a vice presidential candidate can have, even in an unprecedented election.
“Voters don’t vote for the vice presidential candidate. They really look at the top of the ticket,” Medvic said. “Having said that, this state has won the last two elections by tens of thousands of votes — 40,000 in 2016 and 80,000 in 2020.
“If we’re talking tens of thousands of votes, a popular governor in an undecided state could convince enough undecided voters to support his candidacy.”