For Josh Shapiro, it’s all about having the ability to win in Pennsylvania.
That begins Thursday as Shapiro launches his marketing campaign for a second time period as governor with rallies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. But as he runs towards a Republican opponent anticipated to be stronger than the one he confronted 4 years in the past, Shapiro will probably be seeking to burnish his document in a state that has grow to be the keystone for Democrats’ presidential hopes — and presumably his personal.
Shapiro isn’t simply seeking to win a second time period or trying to beat his 2022 record for essentially the most votes anybody has ever received in Pennsylvania.
He needs to run up the rating to assist flip as many as 4 US House districts in Pennsylvania. Boosting Democrats by dominating in a perennial swing state could be an accomplishment Shapiro might cite subsequent 12 months throughout presidential major season.
Shapiro will kick off his 2026 marketing campaign alongside Austin Davis, who’s operating once more to be the state’s lieutenant governor, in what the Democratic governor says in a launch video is about one other spherical of what he has lengthy known as his “getting sh*t done” agenda.
That video kicks off with footage from the I-95 overpass collapse in 2023, which was anticipated to take years to restore and snarl site visitors round Philadelphia. Instead, the street was reopened in lower than two weeks following an emergency declaration Shapiro signed and a few improvisation that included bringing in high-powered jet engines usually used to dry NASCAR tracks.
“Even with a divided state legislature — together — we’ve gotten a whole lot done on issues that have been stuck for decades,” Shapiro says to the digicam. “But there’s always more to do — more people to help, more Pennsylvanians to protect, more bridges to build.”
He additionally touts a document that features eradicating the college degree requirement for a lot of state authorities jobs, instituting universal free breakfasts in public faculties and funding hundreds extra legislation enforcement officers throughout the state. He additionally talks about defending abortion rights, slicing taxes and pushing again on assaults towards elections.
Shapiro is seeking to undertaking an air of dominance: Earlier this week, he introduced that he raised $30 million over 2025 for the anticipated marketing campaign, with $10 million of that coming simply in the fourth quarter. He hit 60% job approval in the state, according to an October poll by Quinnipiac University, and is without doubt one of the nation’s hottest governors.
Shapiro has received three large statewide victories, twice for legal professional basic plus his 2022 win to grow to be governor. But this 12 months he’s anticipated to face state treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican with two statewide wins of her personal.
An Army veteran who has forged her work in the function as preventing for customers by saving and returning them cash from the state, Garrity has run as far as going up towards a politician who hasn’t obtained sufficient actual scrutiny, like in an ad made out like a thriller mystery trailer that her campaign launched on the finish of final month which ended with the tagline, “It’s amazing what you can learn … when you hide in the shadows.”
From the beginning, Garrity has been attacking Shapiro for, as her launch video put it, “spending his time running for president and fundraising in California and other liberal states, raising money from far-left mega-donors like (Mike) Bloomberg and (George) Soros,” charging that the state has suffered in training standing and excessive costs in the meantime.
Shapiro famously didn’t get the large nationwide political promotion he interviewed for after Kamala Harris handed on selecting him as her operating mate in 2024, in what turned one other chapter in a long-icy relationship between the 2. But he stays a key nationwide determine, a preferred swing-state governor and longtime favorite of former President Barack Obama whose cadence typically makes him sound just like the forty fourth president.
He has additionally confronted down private trauma. An attacker set fire to the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg whereas Shapiro and his household have been sleeping there hours after concluding a Passover seder.
A significant component in the governor’s race will probably be President Donald Trump’s standing in a state that went for the Republican in two of his three presidential runs, in 2016 and 2024, and which has been a operating focus of his, together with when he made his first cease of the midterm campaigning there at a rally in December. Garrity offered herself as a powerful ally of the president in her launch video, together with a photograph of them in his favored pose of flashing thumbs-ups.
Shapiro received each his phrases as legal professional basic on the identical ballots in 2016 and 2020 when the state first went narrowly for Trump after which rather less narrowly for Joe Biden. Shapiro has been extremely crucial of the president—together with in calling him out for not doing sufficient to sentence political violence.
Thursday’s announcement will kick off a busy month for Shapiro. His memoir, “Where We Keep the Light,” is out on January 27, which can embody a nationwide e book tour.