Shapiro will take office as governor with mandate from Pa. voters
HARRISBURG — Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor-elect, will take office with a decisive mandate from voters, who overwhelmingly rejected a Republican drive to pare back abortion rights and voting laws in the premier battleground state.
The state’s two-term attorney general, Mr. Shapiro scored a massive 14 percentage-point win over Republican rival Doug Mastriano in this month’s midterm election, smashed state campaign finance records and became the first candidate since 1966 to succeed a governor of the same party in Pennsylvania.
Democrats in the state also flipped a U.S. Senate seat — just the second time since the Civil War that the state elected two Democrats to the chamber — while winning a majority of the state’s congressional seats and possibly even control of the state House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years.
Set to be sworn in Jan. 17, Mr. Shapiro will take the reins in a state riven by bitter partisanship over voting laws and the management of the COVID-19 pandemic by his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. That helped drive a record number of vetoes by one governor going back to the 1970s.
Mr. Shapiro will likely face battles with Republicans who control the state Senate over the grist of statehouse business, such as budgeting.
And, with the 2024 presidential election looming, big questions remain unresolved over the state’s voting laws after three years of partisan gridlock, ongoing court battles over mail-in voting and Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election that still buffet the state.
Mr. Shapiro has emphasized that his victory was helped by Republicans and independents, and that he must work with lawmakers with bipartisanship in mind.
“I’m convinced we’ll find common ground,” Mr. Shapiro said at a Capitol news conference he shared with Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov.elect Austin Davis on Wednesday. “I’ve got a history of bringing Republicans and Democrats together to get things done and that mandate I have is not just an electoral mandate, but what I hear clearly from voters is they want us to get things done in this building.”
One conservative advocate, Leo Knepper, political director of the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, said he worries that Republican lawmakers will shrug off conservative principles because of the size of Mr. Shapiro’s victory.
“I think that some of these Republicans are going to have their eye to the fact that he won by a fairly significant margin and what did that margin look like in their districts,” Mr. Knepper said.
One high-ranking GOP state senator said his party has heard their voters.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about electoral mandates. Our Senate caucus ... also has an electoral mandate,” incoming Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, RIndiana, said last week. “We will work across the aisle when necessary. We will also defend the principles and beliefs of those who’ve elected us.”
About 6 in 10 independents backed Mr. Shapiro in the election, compared with about 3 in 10 who supported Mr. Mastriano, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,100
voters in the state.
Mr. Shapiro said he will continue serving as attorney general until he is sworn in. After that, he said, he will nominate a successor to the Senate for confirmation to fill the remainder of his fouryear term lasting through 2024. He said he will announce a nominee in the coming weeks.
For now, Mr. Shapiro is navigating the massive task of sorting through what is likely to be thousands of applications to fill top posts in his administration as he gets his arms around the government of the nation’s fifthmost populous state.
The 49-year-old governorelect said he is confident of a smooth transition with his fellow Democrat, Mr. Davis. Mr. Shapiro’s campaign policy director, finance director
and press secretary will take on key roles in the transition and inaugural committee.
Otherwise Mr. Shapiro gave few details about the transition at Wednesday’s news conference,, such as who will lead or the dozens of people who will participate in transition committees and how the inaugural festivities willbe financed. He promised more announcements in the comingdays.
Though promising a smooth Democrat-to-Democrat transition, Mr. Shapiro has split with Mr. Wolf on several important policies — including Mr. Wolf’s top climate-change priority, to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil fuel state to impose carbon-pricing — and emphasized that there will be differences between his administration and Mr. Wolf’s.
“Obviously, we’re going to leave our own mark, and we’re going to chart our own course and I know that’s what Gov. Wolf would want us to do,” Mr. Shapiro said.
Mr. Shapiro will take office with the state in a stable financial position, thanks to strong tax collections and billions in federal pandemic aid in a government that doles out more than $100 billion a year in state and federal money.
Some challenges
However, it also has challenging long-term fiscal issues, such as a relatively slow-growing economy, a ballooning retirement-age population and a shrinking working-age population.
Republicans will return in January with a 28-22 majority in the Senate. Mr. Shapiro
said that he and Mr. Davis — who will preside over the state Senate as part of the lieutenant governor’s duties — have spoken with Sen. Kim Ward, R-Hempfield, who is the interim president pro tempore, the Senate’s top-ranking member.
Mr. Shapiro maintains that he will veto any legislation that he views as undermining abortion rights or voting rights. But, in a nod to the Democrats taking control by a 102-101 margin of the state House of Representatives, he told KYW-AM radio in Philadelphia last week that it appears that he “won’t have to wield that veto pen much.”
He proposed a big corporate income tax cut and opened the door to Republican plans to allow broader state funding of private and parochial schools. And he rejected Mr. Wolf’s COVID19 policies, saying he would not order mask mandates or business shutdowns in a pandemic — even though his office had defended them in court.
In post-election interviews, he stressed that he will focus on his core priorities of improving schools, safety and the economy.
Still, the state Supreme Court is considering a legal challenge to how the state funds public schools, a lawsuit that could impose major changes on how the state distributes billions of dollars in school funding.
He will be in the middle of the fight over climate change, facing pressure from environmental advocates to crack down on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, while labor unions — their members work on power plants, pipelines and refineries — say he promised not to block major new gas infrastructure projects.