CHAMBERSBURG \u2013 PA Governor Josh Shapiro has agreed to participate in a debate hosted by ABC27 as his expected Republican challenger, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, continues to push for multiple debates ahead of the November election.<\/p>\n
There have been a number of recent controversies involving the Shapiro administration, including a proposed Pennsylvania Department of Health regulatory rewrite, the governor\u2019s handling of school choice, the state\u2019s response to a measles case and the delayed state budget.<\/p>\n
Pat Ryan of News Talk 103.7FM asked, \u201cIf you\u2019ve got such a big lead, you think you\u2019ve got such a big lead, and you\u2019ve got all that dough, tens of millions of dollars more than Garrity, why on earth would you bother with any kind of debate?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Attorney Clint Barkdoll pointed out, \u201cLast cycle, remember he did not agree to any debates with Doug Mastriano, and that\u2019s part of why this is so noteworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garrity participated in seven debates during her 2024 campaign for state treasurer, with one debate held in each Pennsylvania media market. Shapiro is not committing to the same schedule this year.<\/p>\n
ABC27 has not yet announced a date for its debate, and the station\u2019s report was careful to indicate that Garrity has not formally committed to the event, although she has previously sought additional opportunities to debate Shapiro.<\/p>\n
Garrity has agreed to appear in a debate hosted by KDKA in Pittsburgh and another sponsored by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce, but Shapiro has not committed to either of those events.<\/p>\n
Barkdoll added, \u201cThe old conventional wisdom in politics is if you\u2019re way ahead, don\u2019t agree to any debates because you\u2019re not going to get anything out of it. I don\u2019t know if he may see this as a prelude. If he\u2019s going to run for president in \u201828, he\u2019s got to be on the debate stage. He\u2019s going to have to sharpen those skills. Might that be part of what\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n
Polling is another interesting issue. There have been conflicting polling results and commentary surrounding the governor\u2019s race. Several recent polls have shown Shapiro with leads of 20 or even 25 percentage points over Garrity, while other reporting has questioned the reliability of polling in the race.<\/p>\n
Barkdoll said, \u201c This cuts both ways. I mean, in a weird way, Shapiro may not like that. Might you have his supporters and voters that are getting complacent, saying he\u2019s got this in the bag. We don\u2019t need to show up and vote. That same argument could be made for Garrity voters. Hey, she\u2019s lost. We don\u2019t need to get out and vote. So in a way, these polls aren\u2019t terribly helpful for either candidate when you get to the get out the vote campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHAMBERSBURG \u2013 PA Governor Josh Shapiro has agreed to participate in a debate hosted by ABC27 as his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[116413,48539,8254,116414,1108,28,30,29,13119,4527,3415],"class_list":["post-277972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-abc27","tag-agrees","tag-debate","tag-emerge","tag-governors","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-questions","tag-race","tag-shapiro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277972","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=277972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}