Wolf’s woes shape 2022
For some help in forecasting Pennsylvania’s political future, we could glance briefly at the Empire State’s travails. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was a progressive media darling until, suddenly, he wasn’t. He was celebrated for his handling of the pandemic until, suddenly, his data manipulation was revealed and his decisions denounced.
His political star shone against Donald Trump’s erratic performance, but within weeks of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Cuomo crashed to earth.
The timing is suspect. When Joe Biden finally held his first press conference in late March, it became quite clear he likely won’t be cogent enough to handle a normal campaign in 2024.
Pundits once spoke of Mr. Cuomo as a future president, but Vice President Kamala Harris now stands at the ready. She will acquire little executive experience as veep, however; so should President Biden prove unable to run again, who would her most likely challenger have been? Why, the governor who punked the pandemic and rocked CNN!
A cynic would say he had to go. Think pieces in progressive New York papers and magazines now agree the Cuomo administration was always corrupt and incompetent but able to obscure failure with brutal power politics. The journalists saying this, however, weren’t interested in digging until very recently — now that the 2024 cycle has begun.
In Pennsylvania the next big election year is 2022. What would make this state’s reporters want to dig?
Gov. Tom Wolf cannot run for a third term. It’s surprising how little jostling there is right now to take his place — or it’s as low-key as he is.
We needn’t anticipate a Wolf presidency, or even a stint as a talking head, à la “Fast Eddie” Rendell, but there’s no taint of scandal around Mr. Wolf, either — nothing like the serious reckoning rightly facing Andrew Cuomo.
Our governor is a decent man, but that doesn’t mean he’s competent. The two biggest issues he has faced this term are the pandemic and the clergy sex abuse tragedy. His administration has failed dramatically at both. Whether due to poor performance on his part or on the part of the people he chose to serve us, the failure is ultimately his.
The cost in lost businesses and lost education due to his draconian shutdowns will drain Pennsylvania’s families for decades. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave him a shout-out last June for the state’s strict measures, but if they were trying to pressure other states to follow suit, the data then and now suggest they shouldn’t have.
The day the Wolf administration posted this plaudit online (June 17) I flew to Missouri on a grave family matter and found mask-wearing pretty lackadaisical and restaurants half-full. It remained thus for months. To date, however, Missouri, with half Pennsylvania’s population, has had about half as many cases and half as many deaths — that is, very similar results without the harsher approach. Few states have acted as strictly as Pennsylvania, yet it continues to lag.
Mishandling of the clergy sex abuse scandal is the administration’s second major failing. In response to state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s shocking report, the Legislature approved changes to the state Constitution that would allow survivors of decades-old abuse to sue, but the Department of State failed to advertise those proposed amendments, thus keeping them from voters this May and dealing an incalculable blow to abuse victims.
The governor’s office declines to explain this gross error. He has directed the state Inspector General to investigate, but if the past is any indication, he’ll have to be pressured into releasing the report. It likely won’t help any Democrat hoping to succeed him.
Given Mr. Wolf’s record and his own eccentricities, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has wisely pivoted toward the Senate, leaving Mr. Shapiro, always the front-runner anyway, to standback from the Wolf wipeout.
That leaves ambitious Republicans to pursue the case of the unadvertised constitutional amendments or to explore COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes — unless journalists get to it first.