{"id":246869,"date":"2026-07-18T21:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T21:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/246869\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T21:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T21:52:07","slug":"pa-gov-shapiro-launches-campaign-to-elect-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/246869\/","title":{"rendered":"PA Gov. Shapiro launches campaign to elect Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Gov. Josh Shapiro on Saturday unveiled a multimillion-dollar statewide campaign effort designed to help elect Democrats across Pennsylvania, launching what party officials called the largest coordinated midterm operation in the state\u2019s history.\n<\/p>\n

Shapiro joined Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair Eugene DePasquale and other party leaders in Dauphin County, in the heart of a district Democrats hope to pick up in November. There they announced the \u201cRise Up Pennsylvania\u201d initiative, a coordinated down-ballot campaign in which candidates will share voter registration, field organizing, early voting and turnout efforts ahead of November\u2019s elections.\n<\/p>\n

Shapiro said the election would determine not only the direction of Pennsylvania but also whether Democrats will be able to take power in Washington, D.C.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an opportunity here in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the birthplace of our democracy, the swingiest swing state in the country, to decide what the future of the Congress of the United States looks like and to be a model for good governance right here in Harrisburg,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

According to a Pennsylvania Democratic Party memo, the party will spend $3.3 million to expand an operation that now includes 27 field offices and nearly 100 full-time organizers in battleground communities across the state. The campaign will also include targeted outreach to \u201clow-propensity voters,\u201d according to the party<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Democrats hope the effort will help flip four Republican-held congressional seats \u2014 more pickup opportunities than in any other state. Republicans won three of those seats in 2024 by extremely narrow margins. That includes U.S. Rep. Scott Perry<\/a>, who represents Harrisburg and is being challenged by Janelle Stelson, a former TV news anchor, who ran against Perry in 2024, losing by less than 1%<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Perry \u201cdoes whatever Donald Trump tells him to, including backing this war of choice in Iran,\u201d Shapiro told the crowd, noting that two U.S. service members were killed in action<\/a> Friday.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI want someone who is going to courageously stand up and ask the right questions, demand answers, who\u2019s going to think of those American service members first, who\u2019s going to understand the pain that this war is creating right here at home at the gas pump, and a whole lot of other areas,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

In her speech at the event, Stelson said domestic issues important to Pennsylvanians are going unattended by Washington, D.C.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully you have a house over your head, a roof over your head and, now, gas because of the war in Iran,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople are being forced in many cases to make choices now. \u2018Do I pay for the groceries or the health care my son needs?\u2019 And that\u2019s not the way we should be living in America. And we should not have a U.S. representative, a congressman, who put us in that kind of position.\u201d
\n\"DemocraticDemocratic congressional nominee Janelle Stelson, who is seeking to oust Republican Scott Perry in Dauphin County, speaks to supporters in West Hanover Township on Friday. (Carmen Russell-Sluchansky\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Democrats are also seeking to wrest control of the state Senate from Republicans while also preserving their narrow majority in the Pennsylvania House. Accomplishing that would give the party unified control of state government for the first time in roughly three decades, enabling them to pass pieces of Shapiro\u2019s agenda, such as raising the state minimum wage<\/a>, legalizing cannabis<\/a> and changing the funding structure of public transit<\/a>, including SEPTA<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[25694,442,14288,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-246869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-elections-2026","tag-gov-josh-shapiro","tag-midterm-elections","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246869","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=246869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}