HARRISBURG (PA)
The Daily Item [Sunbury PA]
October 30, 2022
Rarely has an endorsement for elected office been as open and shut as the one for Democrat Josh Shapiro in the race to become Pennsylvania’s next governor.
To some degree, the choice between the state’s attorney general and Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano involves Mastriano’s continued baseless denial of the 2020 presidential election results and his unfounded concerns over alleged voter fraud.
Ultimately, we support Shapiro on his own merits. As he has climbed up the political ladder in Pennsylvania, he has routinely focused on what’s best for commonwealth residents, regardless of their political leanings, color, creed or economic status.
He has worked his way from county commissioner to state representative — he was actually a state representative for seven years before becoming a Montgomery County commissioner — then to Attorney General, an office he has held since 2017.
Shapiro has built his resume on bipartisanship and taking on big battles, particularly against high-profile entities like the Catholic Church and Big Pharma.
He took over the attorney general’s office in the wake of the Kathleen Kane debacle, restoring integrity and bipartisanship to an office that should be above politics. Out of his office, he filed corruption charges against two state lawmakers who were members of his own party along with pushing the investigation into the Catholic Church abuse scandal. The deal brokered between Highmark and UPMC was significant for voters in Western Pennsylvania.
The campaign rhetoric that Shapiro is soft on crime doesn’t stand up under close inspection.
More than a dozen Republicans of various stature — including former Congressmen Charlie Dent and Jim Greenwood — have endorsed Shapiro over the candidate from their own party, a clear indication that Shapiro’s independence matters.
Shapiro, we believe, will go with what he believes is in the interest of Pennsylvania over the best interest of any party. He supports school choice, while fully funding public schools. He supports safe, fair and free elections.
He has a reasonable approach to abortion and the Second Amendment. “I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment,” Shapiro said in an editorial board meeting earlier this month with CNHI newspapers, including The Daily Item. “I’m also a strong believer that people have a right not to get shot in their schools, their churches or on their streets, and so we’ve got some work to do to balance that. I think we can by simply requiring universal background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.”
While his opponent still pushes conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 election and even used campaign funds to bus people to Washington, D.C., on Jan, 6, 2021, Shapiro has been a stalwart in defending Pennsylvanians’ right to vote, successfully defending Pennsylvania from “dozens of bogus election fraud cases,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The choice for Pennsylvania is clear.
NOTE: Opinions expressed in The Daily Item’s editorials are the consensus of the publisher, top newsroom executives and community members of the editorial board. Today’s was written by Editor William Bowman.