The Daily Beast has a terrific profile piece out about Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Josh Shapiro (D. PA). It really showcases his resume as a highly effective Attorney General and the perfect person to be Governor to protect the state of Pennsylvania from being taken over by Trump’s GOP. He’s taken Trump to court 40 times and won:
Shapiro says the success rate is due to the prep he and his fellow Democrats did the minute they noticed Trump making Big Lie mutterings.
“When the former president began talking about how vote by mail was not OK and that the Democrats were going to try and steal the election, all of his greatest hits, I immediately put together a team in my office made up of lawyers from both our criminal division and our civil division,” he says. “We basically had three focuses that we were trying to deal with first.”
One was making sure people had access to the polls, the second was making sure voting was safe, and the third: “How could we deal with the inevitable legal challenges that would come after the election, trying to deny people's votes from being counted?”
It also helped that, according to Shapiro, the rare cases of any type of voter wrongdoing were committed by people trying to vote for Trump. The irony! So what does he think of the Republicans trying to come for the purple state? Bring it.
“I’m staying in this game. I’m not going to be deterred. I am unafraid of what they’re putting forward,” he says.
Click here to listen to Shapiro’s interview.
It’s really important for the sake of our Democracy for Pennsylvania’s Governor’s office to remain in the Democrats control. Especially with more awful scumbags jumping into the GOP primary:
Mike Turzai, the former Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, is running for governor, according to two sources, both key figures in statewide politics, who met with Turzai in recent days.
Turzai resigned the speakership and his House seat in June of last year to become general counsel for Pittsburgh-based Peoples Natural Gas Co. Turzai was elected speaker in 2015. He served 19 years in the Pennsylvania House representing the Northern suburbs of Pittsburgh.
Turzai, 62, was a candidate for governor for less than a month in 2018. He suspended his campaign in February of that year, shortly before former York County Sen. Scott Wagner won the Republican Party endorsement.
He wasn’t through with gubernatorial aspirations though. In December 2019, Turzai told Republicans at a luncheon at the Pennsylvania Society in New York City that he was “very positive” about running for governor in 2022, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The two sources Turzai spoke with asked that their names and positions not be identified. Turzai did not return calls.
“I think he’s got politics in his blood,” said Joseph DiSarro, chairman of the political science department at Washington & Jefferson College, reacting to The Caucus’ story. “I just never thought he’d be happy in the corporate world.”
If Turzai enters the race, following an announcement this week by Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre County, that he is running, he would join a field of more than dozen likely or potential candidates.
Like Corman, Turzai is a proven fundraiser. He had $408,552 in his last campaign finance report in May of this year.
When he announced his resignation in 2020, Turzai said, “I’ve made this decision knowing I’ve left it all on the field.”
He was a staunch conservative in the House who pushed liquor privatization, repeatedly stood for lower taxes and school choice, and was an ardent abortion opponent. Turzai was an ally of the natural gas industry; as speaker and former majority leader, he blocked any severance tax on the industry.
Health and Democracy are on the ballot and we have to be ready to keep Pennsylvania Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Shapiro and his fellow Pennsylvania Democrats campaigns:
Governor
Josh Shapiro for Governor
U.S. Senate
Conor Lamb
John Fetterman
Val Arkoosh
Malcolm Kenyatta
Pennsylvania Courts
Lori Dumas for Commonwealth Court
Lt. Governor
Brian Sims for Lt. Governor
Pennsylvania Organizations
Pennsylvania Democratic Party
Pennsylvania House Democratic Campaign Committee
Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Campaign Committee
Draw the Lines PA
Committee of Seventy
Congress:
Summer Lee for Congress
Sean Meloy for Congress
Chris DeLuzio for Congress
Eugene DePasquale for Congress
Jerry Dickinson for Congress
Matt Cartwright
Susan Wild
Chrissy Houlahan
Madeleine Dean
Dwight Evans
Mary Gay Scanlon