Conservative activist to run for governor

HARRISBURG >> Charlie Gerow, a longtime conservative activist, said he will run for governor of Pennsylvania, formally joining the field of candidates vying for the Republican Party’s nomination next year.

Gerow, 66, runs a communications and marketing firm in Harrisburg, is vice chairman of the American Conservative Union and is a rank-and-file state party committee member. He is also known to Sunday morning television audiences in central Pennsylvania for appearing for more than two decades on “Face the State,” a public affairs show on the local CBS affiliate.

Gerow said he will formally announce his campaign today at a volunteer firehouse in Cumberland County.

Gerow has appeared on the GOP’s event circuit in recent months, speaking to audiences as a potential candidate. This would be Gerow’s first statewide campaign after running unsuccessfully for Congress and the state Legislature in the past.

The governor’s office is open in 2023 since Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, is term-limited.

To succeed him, Democrats are coalescing around Pennsylvania’s secondterm Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who has said he expects to run for governor but has yet to formally announce his candidacy.

On the Republican side, already declared is Lou Barletta, the former fourterm congressman who was the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate in 2018 before he lost to Democrat Bob Casey Jr.

Other Republicans who have said they are interested in running include U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser; Bill McSwain, a former chief federal prosecutor in Philadelphia; and state Sens. Dan Laughlin, Scott Martin and Doug Mastriano.

Several others are declared candidates: Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale, Pittsburgh lawyer Jason Richey and Dr. Nche Zama, a cardiothoracic surgeon.