Pennsylvania Governor- Race of the Day

39 Days Until Election Day

Pennsylvania Governor

Status: Democrat Incumbent

2024 Presidential Result: Red State (East)

 

Outlook: Likely Democrat

 

The Keystone State is perhaps now the nation's biggest prize in the Electoral College. It has sided with the winner in five consecutive Presidential elections and was a huge win for Donald Trump in allowing him to return to the White House. It also is one of the few remaining states to have U.S. Senators from different parties (although the two are seen as close friends now) and both were elected in very tight campaigns. This year though, the Governorship is not expected to be incredibly close.

 

There used to be a tradition in Pennsylvania where Governors were regularly reelected and served eight years in office, but then the other party would win the open race and take over for the same period of time. That ended in 2014, when even in a strong GOP midterm year, the Republican incumbent was defeated by 10 points, part of the reason why Trump's victory in 2016 came as a huge surprise. On the Gubernatorial front, Democrats are now trying to win their fourth in a row and fifth out of the last six, even as the state government is currently divided with Democrats narrowly ahead in the State House and Republicans with a State Senate Majority.

 

In 2022, Democrat Josh Shapiro, who received national attention as the Attorney General of Pennsylvania during the disputed 2020 Presidential election, was anointed by his party without opposition and then easily defeated a weak Republican opponent by 15 points. Shapiro, considered a rising star in the party, who many people thought had deliberately established a speaking skill and cadence that sounded much like Barack Obama, was lucky enough to face Doug Mastriano, a Trump endorsed State Senator who won a crowded and complicated primary. Mastriano was about as big of a MAGA acolyte one can get, from election denying all the way down. He also ran a very unorthodox campaign where he raised little money and rarely interacted at all with any media outlet that was not considered right-wing or friendly. Despite trailing in the general election polls throughout the campaign, Mastriano did not agree to any sort of traditional debate with his opponent and the two never faced off. The end result on Election Night was clear.

Going into this cycle, it looked like Mastriano wanted another opportunity and this very much worried Republicans. Similarly defeated MAGA Gubernatorial candidates have been nominated this year for rematches in places like Illinois and Maryland, but in Pennsylvania, Mastriano decided to take a pass. Trump has since nominated him to be Ambassador to Slovakia. Previously, Congressman Dan Meuser had surprised some by deciding not to run for Governor. He perhaps sensed the uphill nature of a campaign in 2026 against a fairly popular incumbent.

 

This time around though, Republicans were able to nominate someone in May without a primary battle, and in this case, it is a candidate who has won statewide office before. Stacy Garrity, a businesswoman and retied Army Colonel would become Pennsylvania's first woman elected to either the Governorship or U.S. Senate. As recently as 2019, Garrity had lost a Republican primary for a special Congressional election but she ran for Treasurer in 2020 and even as Trump lost the state to Pennsylvania native Joe Biden, Garrity managed to narrowly unseat an incumbent State Treasurer. In 2024 she sought reelection and faced a flawed Democrat opponent and managed to win with the most total votes of any statewide candidate in Pennsylvania history.

 

There are legitimate reasons to believe Garrity has political strength, but a downballot race for Treasurer is different than one for Governor and Garrity has a long record of pro-Trump support, including on the 2020 election results, that seemingly put her at least somewhat in the same category as Mastriano. 

 

Separate primaries are held for Lt. Governor in the Commonwealth and then that person runs on a general election ticket with the Gubernatorial nominee. Garrity had expressed support for attorney Jason Richey, who chaired the party in Allegheny County, a different part of the state from where she hails from. Richey had run for Governor in the crowded 2022 field but had withdrawn along with others in a failed attempt to get a nominee other than Mastriano. In this year's primary, with the support of the party, Richey defeated a gadfly perennial candidate with 66 percent of the vote. That is perhaps not exactly a totally comfortable number, but it is likely few people were really paying much attention to that primary.

 

The Philadelphia area Shapiro is running once again with current Lt. Governor Austin Davis, who like his Republican counterpart this year, also comes from Western Pennsylvania. As he is about to turn 37 years old, Davis, a former State Representative is the youngest Lt. Governor in American history, and the first African-American statewide official in Pennsylvania. Most believe that if Shapiro has his way, Davis will become Governor before too long. A lot of Democrats in the state and nationwide wish he already were Governor.

 

Shapiro is widely seen as someone very much preparing himself to run for President in 2028, although he claims he is totally focused on his job and the campaign at hand. In 2024, he was thought of as a frontrunner to become Kamala Harris's running-mate during the crazy abbreviated post-Biden drop out period. It appears he was the runner-up to Tim Walz, and people have all sorts of theories. Harris and Shapiro have both written books in which they appear to take some political shots at each other and might soon be facing off on a debate stage. It appears likely that Shapiro realized that the job of Vice President would not really have all that much responsibility under a Harris Administration (just as she did not have much to do under Biden) and he decided he would rather remain Governor. Harris's team put out word that Shapiro was already being too demanding during the interview process. A lot of others think that the fact that Shapiro is Jewish (especially since Harris is married to a Jewish attorney herself) and his history of support for Israel made him a non-starter to many on the left. The more progressive Walz (who claimed he had no intention of ever running for President) turned out to be what looked like the "safer" choice at the time, and Shapiro loyally offered his support to the ticket and spoke rousingly at the party's national convention. I will just briefly state that Harris should have gone with Shapiro. They had to actually win the election before any worries about what would go on in the Oval Office between two politicians. Pennsylvania was the key(stone) swing state and if nothing else, Shapiro would have delivered a win there. His presence on the ticket also probably would have saved an incumbent Democrat Senator from being defeated and maybe some U.S. House members too, which could have even kept the party in the majority on Capitol Hill. Trump probably still would have won in other states, but Shapiro would have done a lot more to convince centrist voters and Jewish-Americans that Harris was acceptable. There was definitely a worry about left-wingers boycotting the ticket and those that would have, probably still did so with Walz on the ticket anyway.

 

In this campaign, Shapiro is probably not going to have much trouble against Garrity, but the contest could be closer than his victory over the hapless Mastriano. If there truly is a national wave, the incumbent will likely win by about the same margin or even more. Shapiro is running as a relative centrist as a Democrat and on his ability to as he puts it, "get shit done." (Profanity is far more prominent in politics these days, even from a "nice Jewish boy" like Shapiro.)

 

Obviously, Republicans will try to tie Shapiro to national Democrats who are considered farther to his left and point at his national ambitions as a problem for Pennsylvania. At the same time, they will seem to say that he will never make it in the party sweepstakes, which kind of hurts their argument that he is too far to the left. 

 

Next, I would like to point out that Governor Shaprio is definitely to my left ideologically by a substantial degree. As a person though who does not want to see a Trump supporter get elected President next, I think he may just very well be the strongest option for Democrats. The party could definitely do worse, and sadly, probably will. Shapiro, who with his family, was sleeping in the Governors Mansion after a Jewish holiday celebration, when a far-left terrorist threw firebombs into it. Luckily, no one was injured, but in this time of rising antisemitism, Shapiro is very much at the forefront. Can today's Democrats nominate a Jewish-American? I really have my doubts, not that Republicans ever would. When Harris passed over Shapiro in 2024, my thought was that Joe Lieberman in 2000 aside, a Jew might never again be nominated by either major party for President or Vice President. We shall see.

 

If Shapiro runs for President, he will face many questions about Israel.Thus far, while very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, he has remained a supporter of the Jewish State. For some on the left, that is simply unforgivable and they will demand he speak about "genocide." There are also likely to be other Jewish candidates in the field (two of them from Chicago) and two others who are not Jewish but married to people who are. More recently, a lot of attention is being paid to Jon Ossoff, a Jewish-American Georgia Senator who is expected to win reelection this year and then may run for President. Ossoff and Shapiro both seem to have a lot of the same political strengths, but with different backgrounds. If both are actually in the same field together, they will serve to each the chances of each other. That will definitely be something to watch also.

 

Also, as a side note, we should how the most pro-Israel Democrat in politics today is also from Pennsylvania, but Shapiro has long had a fraught relationship with Senator John Fetterman. Once a darling of progressive activists, Fetterman, in his post-stroke era, has taken on a whole new political identity in many ways and is now extremely politically embattled and some think he could become a Republican in the next Congress. He also clearly has never gotten along with Shapiro, perhaps due to some problems they had when he was Lt. Governor and Shapiro was Attorney General. Having Fetterman against him is definitely a plus for Shapiro among Democrats nationally, even though the two might not be totally out of sync on Israel.

 

While the focus of this piece should be on the 2026 Governor election, one cannot help but look ahead at what it all might mean to Josh Shapiro. Clearly, voters in his state are fairly happy with the job he is doing and he may wind up winning a sizable reelection in a crucial state that Republicans have recently tasted victory in. That should be a sign to Democrats that he is someone to seriously look at as a strong Presidential contender. There might just be a lot of his party members, even in his home state, who are fine with supporting him for Governor, but are going to be afraid to get behind him if he seems the Presidential nomination. Covering Josh Shapiro in this 2026 election period would be quiet an interesting job.

 

 

Gubernatorial races predicted thus far: 

18 D (2 Safe, 8 Likely, 5 Leans, 3 Tossup)

10 R (2 Safe, 2 Likely, 4 Leans, 2 Tossup)

 

Totals predicted thus far:

24 D (6 holdover, 2 Safe, 8 Likely, 5 Leans, 3 Tossup)

18 R (8 holdover, 2 Safe, 2 Likely, 4 Leans, 2 Tossup)