debate last week<\/a> \u2013 have been purposefully exclusionary by basing their participation threshold on fundraising from 2025, when Griffith\u2019s campaign had yet to kick off.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI wasn\u2019t in the race in 2025,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if I were a billionaire and I loaned my campaign $100 million \u2013 which I obviously didn\u2019t \u2013 I still couldn\u2019t have met (the threshold) because they made a decision on 2025 data \u2026 There was a similar (event) at the Mummers Museum where I didn\u2019t get to participate, either.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a conversation with City & State, Griffith said his top priorities include a $15-an-hour minimum wage and community protections from data centers. He said the \u201cincreasing wealth gap\u201d has made life \u201cunaffordable for working-class people,\u201d adding that if elected, he would immediately push for a Medicare for All vote and \u201cfight the consensus\u201d to get congressmembers to put their healthcare stances on the record.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been concerned (about) a lack of access to healthcare for a long time and environmental degradation, but it got much worse after Trump returned to office a year and half ago,\u201d Griffith said. \u201cNow we could see the worst violations of our civil rights \u2026 where people are being abducted in the street and being deported without due process.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of calls to increase the minimum wage and implement Medicare for All, Griffith said many of his conversations with residents are about data centers and consumer protections from their effects, including rising energy costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOther candidates are not talking about how much it is costing us \u2013 higher electricity costs, as well as polluted water,\u201d he told City & State. \u201cAt every forum where people can ask questions, they\u2019ve asked me about it. And then on the street, several times a day, someone will ask about that \u2026 Making electricity and water cost more makes everything even more unaffordable, and the billionaires should be paying for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have socialized risk and privatized gain. And these data centers \u2026 it is a symptom of our government always favoring the profit of the very wealthy at the expense of common people,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The concept of affordability has driven many conversations in the race. And while the Democratic primary for a deep-blue seat features candidates with like-minded ideas, Griffith\u2019s move to stand out is his pitch that he\u2019s a regular person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI have made far less money than any of the other people (in this race) \u2026 I am the only working-class person,\u201d Griffith said. \u201cOur candidacy has one-fiftieth of the resources of any of the others (and) if I win, it\u2019s going to prove that all of the money spent on campaigns is wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shaun Griffith is tired of being left out of the conversation.\u00a0 The political newcomer \u2013 and longshot in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3444,7097,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-187335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-campaigns-elections","tag-congress","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}