<\/p>\n Shapiro announces the reopening of I-95 in Philadelphia during a news conference in 2023. In the years following the I-95 collapse, Shapiro would emerge as a national political figure \u2014 possible vice presidential nominee in 2024, now a likely presidential contender in 2028. In the process, the 53-year-old has become a significant player in the ideological wars roiling the Democratic Party. He is one of the de facto leaders of a Democratic faction that wants the party to steer a more moderate path, away from the progressivism of Bernie Sanders and AOC. He is also an observant Jew and a defender of Israel at a time when the Gaza war and larger questions about Zionism have deeply divided Democrats.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve read about Shapiro in the national media, chances are it was through the lens of these big-picture questions. When he recently sat for a Q&A<\/a> with Politico, for instance, about half the interview focused on Israel and antisemitism.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This article was produced in partnership with Spotlight PA<\/a>. It is part of a collaboration between NOTUS Perspectives and local newsrooms, featuring reporters across the country telling in-depth stories about key 2026 races.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shapiro also very much wants voters to see the guy from the I-95 rebuild \u2014 the governor who gets shit done. \u201cI\u2019m gonna run on that GSD agenda,\u201d he recently said<\/a> in an interview with Al Sharpton, describing his current reelection campaign for governor. \u201cI\u2019m gonna run on how we\u2019ve made people\u2019s lives better \u2014 their schools, their safety, their economic opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n A confidant of the governor, the suburban Philadelphia pastor Marshall Mitchell, told us that calling Shapiro ambitious \u201cmight be an understatement.\u201d But, he added, \u201cIt\u2019s not blind ambition. It is a desire to use the life that God has given you to get shit done, get stuff done and help people out.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Shapiro of the I-95 crash is not the entire story. Nor is the national-media version of Shapiro, the one who is a hyper-articulate voice on the ideological direction of the Democratic Party. There is also the entirety of his governing record \u2014 which we have witnessed and chronicled as reporters at Spotlight PA, a nonpartisan and nonprofit newsroom. We aren\u2019t, of course, in a position to render a judgment on his tenure in office; should he run for president, voters across the country will have to do that for themselves. What we can say is that anyone who has served as a governor will invariably accumulate wins and losses, and Shapiro is no exception. As Democratic voters nationwide get to know him in the months and years ahead, it\u2019s worth understanding not just where he has succeeded as governor but also where he has arguably fallen short.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Shapiro, who grew up outside Philadelphia, has been on a political winning streak since college. At the University of Rochester, he made school history by getting elected student-association president as a freshman. After graduating in 1995, he moved to Washington, D.C., to work in Congress, quickly rising to become one of Capitol Hill\u2019s youngest chiefs of staff.<\/p>\n Moxie helped. He worked for then-Rep. Joe Hoeffel, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, who remembers the first time he met Shapiro. The 25-year-old walked straight up to Hoeffel, introduced himself and asked to be his legislative director. \u201cHe made a good first impression,\u201d Hoeffel told us. \u201cA little brash, a little self confident. I say that with respect. You need to be that way in Washington.\u201d Shapiro was a tireless networker, Hoeffel and others recall, helping him establish connections that would later benefit his political career.<\/p>\n After nearly a decade in Washington, Shapiro itched for something different, as he detailed in his recent memoir, \u201cWhere We Keep the Light.\u201d He had risen through the ranks of congressional staff and none of the other opportunities in Washington, including becoming a K Street lobbyist, spoke to him. Instead, now married and a father, he decided to return to his home state and enter local politics.<\/p>\n In 2004, he ran to represent his suburban Philadelphia district in the state House of Representatives. It was a solidly Republican district that few expected him to win, but Shapiro reached beyond the traditional Democratic base, seeking to appeal to centrists, independent and unaffiliated voters, and even Republicans. He won by 9 percentage points<\/a> and cemented an approach to politics that would carry over to his lawmaking days, his six-year stint as Pennsylvania\u2019s attorney general and his tenure as governor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shapiro, then Montgomery County Commissioner, campaigns for the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania attorney general in 2016. He held the AG position for six years. Today, he may invoke traditional liberal themes (\u201cNo matter what you look like<\/a>, where you come from, who you love, who you pray to or choose not to pray to, you have a place here in Pennsylvania\u201d), but some of his record seems intended to appeal to the center and right. His budgets over the past three years have increased funding for school-to-work programs such as apprenticeships and vocational initiatives. And he is an unabashed supporter of law enforcement who has frequently called policing a \u201cnoble profession\u201d and has added tens of millions of dollars to the budget for hiring state troopers.<\/p>\n Shapiro\u2019s clearest wins as governor have come through executive orders and actions. Early in his tenure, he issued an executive order establishing a money-back guarantee for delayed government permits \u2014 part of an overall push to make government move \u201cat the speed of business.\u201d He also acted via executive order to remove college-degree requirements for most state jobs.<\/p>\n The governor seems particularly proud of his track record encouraging businesses to invest in Pennsylvania. His administration has issued dozens of press releases highlighting private sector projects in the state, including an Eli Lilly GLP-1 factory, an Urban Outfitters distributorship and Amazon data centers. He has attracted \u201cover $41 billion in private-sector investment,\u201d according to a June press release, \u201cwhile creating more than 24,000 good-paying jobs across the Commonwealth.\u201d<\/p>\n Shapiro\u2019s economic efforts \u2014 and other tacks to the center \u2014 have earned him some GOP fans, such as Jim Schultz, a White House attorney in President Donald Trump\u2019s first administration and now a lobbyist whose clients have included data center and gambling technology developers with stakes in Pennsylvania. \u201cRepublicans like me care about education, business, job creation, a strong economy and government efficiency,\u201d Schultz told us. \u201cShapiro made a promise on each one and he\u2019s delivered on those promises.\u201d<\/p>\n But look a little closer and Shapiro\u2019s ability to get what he wants from both his Republican opponents and his fellow Democrats appears more complicated. Take school vouchers. Shapiro is one of the highest-profile Democrats in the country to support private school vouchers for kids in low-performing public schools. In 2023, during closed-door talks on his first state budget proposal, his administration sent a letter to lawmakers<\/a> affirming his support for vouchers. Around the same time, he appeared on Fox News<\/a> saying that \u201cevery child of God deserves a shot here in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.\u201d<\/p>\n A week later, the GOP-controlled state Senate passed a budget deal that included $100 million for a voucher program. Republicans and their allies said the deal was backed by Shapiro and expected it to pass the state House of Representatives, where Democrats held a one-vote majority.<\/p>\n Following a private meeting between Shapiro and Democratic lawmakers with \u201ca lot of raw emotions\u201d and \u201ca lot of hard feelings about a lot of things,\u201d Democratic state Rep. Peter Schweyer told us shortly after<\/a>, \u201cwe got to a good place.\u201d That place included Shapiro promising to veto his own priority \u2014 the $100 million for school vouchers \u2014 from the final deal if Democrats put up the votes to pass the budget. When it passed a few days later, Shapiro upheld his end of the bargain. Republicans, furious at the betrayal<\/a>, delayed the budget\u2019s signing by a month and stalled other key budget-related bills into December<\/a>. (For his part, Shapiro has said there never was a deal<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The residual hard feelings have ossified Harrisburg\u2019s dealmaking environment in the years since. All four of Shapiro\u2019s budgets have been signed past the statutory June 30 deadline; the 2023 and 2025 budgets went unfinished for 100-plus days. It\u2019s not unusual for state legislators to blow the deadline, but 2023 ended a period of relative fiscal peace<\/a> under Shapiro\u2019s Democratic predecessor, Tom Wolf, who had built a better working relationship with the Republican-controlled legislature in his second term.<\/p>\n On the campaign trail during his 2022 bid for governor, Shapiro advocated raising the minimum wage, enacting stricter gun laws, and passing nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people. While in office, he has called for the state legislature to legalize recreational marijuana, close corporate tax loopholes, increase public transit funding, and restrict private equity\u2019s ability to buy hospitals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shapiro and his family leave a voting location in 2022. None of these items have become law. Most have passed the House, in some form or another, but then died in the Republican-controlled state Senate. For instance, a possible corporate tax cut did not entice lawmakers to raise<\/a> the state\u2019s $7.25 minimum wage, and an anti-private equity bill<\/a> hasn\u2019t advanced amid opposition from nursing homes and other healthcare interests.<\/p>\n For Shapiro\u2019s supporters, there\u2019s an easy justification for these false starts. \u201cHarrisburg didn\u2019t say no. Republicans in Harrisburg said no,\u201d said Mark Segal, a Philadelphia journalist and gay-rights activist who\u2019s advised Shapiro for nearly two decades.<\/p>\n Still, the governor has the power to focus the attention of the public and the legislature. And it\u2019s undeniable that Harrisburg has had an unproductive few years. In fact, during Shapiro\u2019s tenure, the state legislature has passed record-low numbers of laws.<\/p>\n Moreover, some of Shapiro\u2019s policy accomplishments simply built off Wolf\u2019s work. Shapiro\u2019s reelection campaign, for example, trumpets his approval of universal free breakfast in public schools, which he advocated for and included in his first budget. But it was Wolf who first implemented the program<\/a> in his final year in office. Shapiro has just continued it.<\/p>\n Shapiro\u2019s term has also not been scandal free. One of his most trusted advisers, Mike Vereb, was accused of sexual harassment by a female subordinate while serving as Shapiro\u2019s secretary of legislative affairs in 2023. His administration quietly settled the matter and Vereb resigned<\/a>. But the public became aware of the allegations when they were leaked to the media. Shortly after, we were the first outlet to report details of the $295,000 settlement paid to the complainant. Shapiro has said little about the incident, sticking instead to broadly defending his administration\u2019s process for reporting and investigating workplace abuses. (Vereb has repeatedly declined to publicly discuss the allegations.)<\/p>\n In addition, Shapiro\u2019s relationship with the state Capitol\u2019s press corps has been tepid \u2014 a contrast to his solicitous approach to national outlets. He has not responded to our requests for interviews over the years, including for this piece, and, in general, local Capitol reporters rarely get a chance to ask him more than a few questions in a press gaggle.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n There are also pockets of the state that feel Shapiro left them behind as he climbed the political ladder. In 2018, as attorney general, he released a report<\/a> detailing a breathtaking level of abuse by Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania \u2014 more than 1,000 victims and hundreds of priests who were alleged abusers \u2014 as well as a systematic and deliberate cover-up of it all. In the months following the report\u2019s release, Shapiro played a key role in lobbying lawmakers to amend a statute of limitations that prohibited survivors of long-ago abuse from bringing civil suits against their abusers and the institutions that protected them. Attempts had failed over the years to convince reluctant state legislators \u2014 most of them Republicans \u2014 to temporarily lift the statute for similar crimes. But the report\u2019s release and the attention it was receiving around the world were widely viewed as a turning point.<\/p>\n We covered that frenzied time in the Capitol. The intense pressure campaign on the legislature was unlike anything we\u2019ve seen before: survivors standing outside legislative offices reading aloud portions of the 1,000-page report and displaying photos of themselves as children; impromptu press conferences popping up in the Capitol rotunda; parents of victims waiting for lawmakers outside their offices to plead for change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shapiro, then attorney general, speaks at a news conference in Pennsylvania\u2019s Capitol after legislation related to a grand jury report on Catholic Church sex abuse stalled in 2018. Though the push to change the statute of limitations ultimately failed, Shapiro later told the media, \u201cThis is far from over.\u201d And survivors took that to heart.<\/p>\n When Shapiro became governor in 2023, they hoped he would use his bully pulpit to get a statute of limitations measure across the finish line. Bill Wachob is a former state Democratic lawmaker who was abused as a preteen, by an abuser who had himself been molested by a priest. He understands that as governor, Shapiro can\u2019t unilaterally change the law. What he can do is prioritize the matter for lawmakers.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been around politics, politicians and legislatures my entire adult life. I know that when a governor wants something done, it usually gets done,\u201d Wachob, who has worked as a political consultant for the past four decades, wrote in an open letter to Shapiro earlier this year. \u201cSo, when a Governor who prides himself on \u2018Getting Stuff Done\u2019 allows this issue to languish year after year, it becomes impossible to ignore the question: Why the indifference?\u201d Recently, Wachob told us, \u201cHe\u2019s really dropped the ball on this.\u201d<\/p>\n Arthur Baselice Jr. \u2014 a retired Philadelphia police officer whose son, Arthur Baselice III, was sexually abused by a priest and later died of a drug overdose \u2014 was one of the people who, along with his wife, stood with Shapiro in front of the marble steps in the Capitol rotunda during the campaign to get the statute of limitations lifted. Today, he believes Shapiro walked away when the fight became too hard. \u201cSo, tell me, what has he accomplished for the victims?\u201d he said. \u201cI would like him to look me in the face and tell me. And I don\u2019t want to hear sorry. You can\u2019t apologize to the dead.\u201d<\/p>\n Sex-abuse survivors are not the only constituents who feel that Shapiro the attorney general abandoned them once he became governor. So do some residents of Dimock, a rural town of about 1,200 people in northeast Pennsylvania, whose lives were upended by fracking, the controversial process of extracting natural gas from underground rock.<\/p>\n For over 15 years, local residents have been waging a campaign against the fracking industry. They claim it has left their hometown unrecognizable, with water that is undrinkable and residents with headaches, nose bleeds and other health problems. For a while, it seemed Shapiro would be their hero: As attorney general, he reached out to residents and invited them to Harrisburg to testify before a grand jury that his office had convened on natural gas drilling. The subsequent report<\/a>, released in 2020, called for stricter rules for Pennsylvania\u2019s natural gas industry.<\/p>\n As attorney general, Shapiro also charged a gas company with polluting Dimock\u2019s water. Later, in the months between his campaign for governor and his swearing in, he negotiated a plea<\/a> that required the company to accept the charge of polluting the town\u2019s water (though not admit guilt), pay the water bills of affected residents for 75 years and commit $16 million toward rebuilding a public water line.<\/p>\n But a day after Shapiro announced the plea, residents learned that state regulators in Wolf\u2019s outgoing administration had agreed to lift a 12-year moratorium on drilling in a 9-square-mile area underneath Dimock. A spokesperson for Shapiro\u2019s office denied at the time that it played any role in the Wolf administration\u2019s decision, but some residents were outraged with him nonetheless. When she learned of the moratorium lifting, Dimock resident Victoria Switzer, who had stood next to Shapiro when he announced the plea, said she felt duped. \u201cI am so mortified that I was paraded and made a puppet,\u201d she told Inside Climate News<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shapiro, then the governor-elect, said he would review the decision to lift the moratorium once in office, but he has never reversed it. (State environmental officials say surface drilling is still not allowed in that area, and the deep-bore drilling occurring there will not impact water quality.) \u201cI know the folks in Dimock \u2026 feel like they were props for Shapiro,\u201d Karen Feridun of the Better Path Coalition, a grassroots organization that advocates for clean and renewable energy, told us. \u201cThey just feel like they were used, so there is a lot of ill will.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, a handful of Dimock residents confronted Shapiro at a union hall in Scranton, where he was presenting his energy plans. Some expressed frustration that construction of the new water line was taking too long, and that they still did not have clean water. Craig Stevens, an activist who went to that meeting, held up pictures of children and polluted water. \u201cThese are the children that have been poisoned,\u201d Stevens told Shapiro, according to WVIA Radio<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s their water.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dimock resident Ray Kemble, third from left, speaks to the media about water pollution in 2022. Local resident Ray Kemble was escorted out of the room after accusing the governor of betraying the town. When Shapiro was in the running to be the 2024 vice presidential nominee, Kemble and 10 other activists wrote an open letter<\/a> to then-Vice President Kamala Harris calling him a \u201cheartless politician.\u201d<\/p>\n Shapiro, who describes himself as an \u201call-of-the-above\u201d governor on energy, has disappointed others with his environmental record too. Pennsylvania is the third-largest<\/a> net supplier of energy to other states, and the state is second only to Texas in domestic natural gas reserves. Shapiro jockeyed and received federal funding for hydrogen production<\/a>, an industry that taps these reserves. He has also supported an ongoing data center build-out<\/a>. And, as part of a deal to finish last year\u2019s late budget, he agreed to kill a program put in place by Wolf that limited carbon emissions from power plants \u2014 an initiative that had been long opposed by both organized labor and business groups.<\/p>\n Environmental advocate Patrick McDonnell \u2014 chief of the state\u2019s Department of Environmental Protection under Wolf and now leader of the environmental nonprofit PennFuture \u2014 notes that Shapiro has delivered some additional funding to place solar panels on schools, to clean streams and to plug abandoned gas wells. But the governor\u2019s overall environmental record has left him underwhelmed. \u201cAll-of-the-above,\u201d McDonnell told us, means that, among other possibilities, \u201cyou\u2019re in favor of whoever calls on the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n And yet, despite all of this \u2014 the setbacks on many policy priorities, the subsets of voters who feel alienated \u2014 one thing is undeniably true about Josh Shapiro: He is popular. Very popular. Current polls show him easily winning a second term this November.<\/p>\n Leading up to primary day in May, we spoke to voters in urban, rural and suburban precincts. In Allentown, Sapphire Kinard, an 18-year-old Democrat, supports Shapiro. \u201cI think he does a good job of connecting his ideals to the kids,\u201d Kinard said. \u201cHe posts a lot on social media. Informative, but fun.\u201d<\/p>\n A 42-year-old nonprofit worker named Emily Behm in Philadelphia\u2019s outlying suburbs told us unprompted she hopes Shapiro runs for president, listing her reasons in quick succession: He \u201cgenuinely gives a shit\u201d; he has sued President Trump (24 times and counting); he\u2019s \u201ca good moderate\u201d whom even her Republican husband likes. \u201cWe need someone not crazy,\u201d Behm said. \u201cWe don\u2019t need extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n In an increasingly chaotic world, his responses to crises \u2014 including the collapse of I-95 \u2014 give people a sense of stability. This makes him broadly appealing to wide swaths of the Democratic base, said Jamie Perrapato, a longtime suburban Philadelphia Democratic political organizer. The state\u2019s Democratic rank and file, she said, \u201cwould do anything Josh Shapiro would ask them to do for the cause. In whatever ways Josh would ask people to step up, they would.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of his popularity may simply stem from his skills as a communicator. He\u2019s not just an excellent speaker; he and his team have proven adept at the new world of digital branding. They produce a constant stream of content \u2014 clips of him delivering a perfect soundbite to a cable host, video collaborations with social media influencers. His local critics, meanwhile, just don\u2019t seem to break through.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shapiro at the Obama Presidential Center\u2019s dedication ceremony last month. There\u2019s no doubt, in short, that Shapiro would be a formidable candidate. The bigger question is whether he would be an effective president \u2014 someone who can get laws through Congress, a tactician who can work with his own party and his political enemies, too.<\/p>\n Following the Trump administration, said Marshall Mitchell, the Philadelphia pastor and Shapiro confidant, \u201cwe are going to see an era of reform that will surpass what we saw after Watergate, and we will need people of immense will who are able to suspend even their own participation in systems and structures to create a more perfect union.\u201d He added, \u201cThat\u2019s going to take leadership, and that\u2019s going to take a real moral compass.\u201d<\/p>\n For Mitchell, Shapiro is at the top of the list of people who have such a moral compass. But as Mitchell \u2014 and Shapiro himself \u2014 would tell you, it isn\u2019t always enough to have a moral compass; you also have to get shit done. Can Shapiro do both? If he runs for president, national voters will have to add up his successes and setbacks, and then decide.<\/p>\n Stephen Caruso and Angela Couloumbis are reporters at Spotlight PA<\/a>.<\/p>\n More from NOTUS Perspectives:<\/p>\n The Photo of the Woman on the Metro Was Powerful. Was It Also Exploitative?<\/a><\/p>\n Being Jewish Doesn\u2019t Mean I Have a Secret Agenda<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Shapiro](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784562800_260_.jpeg\")
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\n Joe Lamberti\/AP\n <\/p>\n![\"AP731629977123.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784562800_796_.jpeg\")
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\n Michael Bryant\/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP\n <\/p>\n![\"Election](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784562800_250_.jpeg\")
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\n Jon Cherry\/AP\n <\/p>\n