RealClearPennsylvania Articles

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s team spent the winter insisting that his re-election was a foregone conclusion, waving around an internal Upswing poll that put him seven points up on Allegheny County controller Corey O’Connor among likely Democratic voters in the upcoming May 20 primary – 49-42, if you believe house numbers commissioned by an incumbent for whom handing out free recycling bins counts as “transformative governance.” Inside his bubble that poll was scripture. Outside of it, the story was very different. First came an Upswing survey released to allies...

If the U.S. Department of Education suddenly went away, what would change for local families and communities? Not much. For starters, the Department of Education (ED) doesn’t educate anyone. It’s a middleman. Americans send their taxes to Washington, D.C., the bureaucracy takes a big chunk of it to pay staff and overhead, and the rest is sent to states and local communities with a bunch of red tape. Reducing that bureaucracy should save money, which could mean schools could actually receive more funding. Furthermore, there’s no evidence the federal involvement has improved...

The new Pennsylvania GOP chairman, state Sen. Greg Rothman, was elected on a platform that can be described as: “Let’s make Pennsylvania Florida.” In other words, make the GOP the plurality party in Pennsylvania and turn the perennial purple state red – just like Florida transitioned over the past decade. This requires executing three things well: registering more Republicans; winning over more voters to support GOP candidates; and getting more supporters to actually vote. Those tasks are intertwined in messaging, tactics, and tone. Yet they require refocused...

President Donald Trump has just passed the proverbial 100-day mark of his presidency, following his November victory with 49.8% of the national popular vote, with an Electoral College win by a 312 to 226 margin. But Trump’s honeymoon is over. According to a composite of national polling at RealClearPolitics, Trump’s average approval rating is 45.2%, while a higher 52.4% disapprove of the job he is doing (as of April 29). In critical battleground states like Pennsylvania, Trump’s approval rating is also 46% according to a recent Susquehanna Polling and Research survey...

President Donald Trump and Gov. Josh Shapiro can agree on one thing: Pennsylvania needs a manufacturing boom. Political talk and regulatory action, however, are two different matters entirely. While the president is doing his part to incentivize manufacturing in Pennsylvania, Shapiro has done virtually nothing to eliminate the many barriers standing in the way of new factories and good-paying jobs. It all comes down to a single word: overregulation. In Washington, Trump is cutting the red tape that handcuffs manufacturers. His administration is repealing ten federal mandates for every new...

It appears that good news keeps coming for Pennsylvania’s Republicans. Recently released data reveal a subtle but significant trend: Republicans are embracing mail-In balloting at levels not seen before, while Democrats, though still dominant, show signs of plateauing. This shift, as the 2025 Primary Election approaches, merits attention for what it suggests about the Commonwealth’s electoral future. Let’s begin with the headline number. Republicans now make up 26% of mail-in ballot applications – a record high for the party in Pennsylvania – compared to...

Navigating an unexpected pregnancy presents numerous challenges, as my husband and I learned firsthand when I became pregnant in college.    Newly married and wrapping up our college studies, we were surprised but excited about starting our family.     Armed with the health insurance plan we bought through our college, we called our local hospital to establish care with an OBGYN. When the doctor’s office informed me I would need to have my pregnancy confirmed by bloodwork before they could schedule my appointment, I thought, no problem. But that’s when the...

President Donald Trump has done it again. Never one for subtly, he has elected officials, the media, and international officials all talking about tariffs and trade – when it wasn’t on anyone’s mind 60 days ago. Trump, who once proudly proclaimed that he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, nor Paris,” reminded us that he’s governing for the “forgotten” – towns, workers, and families left behind in a shifting global economy – and to put America first. For decades, the “forgotten” economy has been changing...

Today is Tax Day. Each year, April 15th reminds us of the costliness of government spending – and why lawmakers must reduce this financial burden on hardworking taxpayers. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania is on a collision course with higher taxes. Due to years of spending growth, Pennsylvania faces a $4.8 billion structural deficit. Lawmakers’ options for addressing this deficit are limited: They can either cut spending or increase taxes. Yet, Gov. Josh Shapiro seems to be embracing a riskier third option: ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Instead of reining in spending,...

Architecture is more than mere construction. It encompasses the identity, values, and evolution of a community. Among the architects who have profoundly influenced the American landscape, C. Emlen Urban is distinguished by his significant impact on the built environment of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and its surrounding areas. His work spans various styles, decades, and functions, consistently reflecting an acute understanding of proportion, aesthetics, and civic pride. Honoring his legacy through historic preservation is not simply an act of nostalgia but a commitment to cultural continuity,...

The following is a piece originally published at PennLive in August 2019.  Nobody can say he wasn’t warned. In the days leading up to President Trump’s announcement that he intends to impose a 10 percent tariff on an additional $300 billion imported Chinese goods, virtually every on of his advisors cautioned against the move. They said it could have a negative impact on the U.S. economy. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Nick Mulvaney, Chief Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow, National Security Advisor John Bolton and even Robert Lighthizer, the president’s...

I’ve been a working GOP political consultant for more than 40 years. One of the most amazing stories in politics in that time is the way the GOP in Pennsylvania has clawed back from a voter registration deficit of more than a million votes to essentially parity. In the mid-2000s, Pennsylvania Democrats maintained a healthy voter registration edge of between 450,000-500,000 statewide. That’s what Republicans dealt with in the late U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter’s successful 2004 re-election campaign, which I managed, as he beat Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel that fall by nearly...

Believe it or not, the 2028 presidential election isn’t all that far off, especially in this modern era of political fundraising and positioning. On the Republican side, one might assume that Vice President J. D. Vance is a strong favorite to be the party’s nominee to succeed President Donald Trump. On the other side, the Democratic Party is in shambles, lacking a standard-bearer, a message, or policies that register on the common-sense meter. That doesn’t mean that the jockeying hasn’t begun. On the West Coast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has started distancing...

The U.S. Department of Education might be going away – and it’s the right move – one that returns control to the states. Closing the department provides a massive opportunity for Gov. Josh Shapiro and his fellow lawmakers to fix our education system. Education is – and will always be – a local issue. The U.S. Constitution grants the federal government zero authority on educational matters. As such, the U.S. Department of Education has always played an overrated role in education. The department neither runs schools nor teaches a single child. It neither sets...

Amid the cheers and groans not only in Pennsylvania, but also the nation, following this week’s state Senate special election in Lancaster County, observers are asking: Is Trump in trouble? Are Republicans in trouble? And, to paraphrase: “Toto, are we not in Lancaster 2016 anymore?” Probably not. Maybe. Yes. So, what happened? The Democrats beat the Republicans … at a “game” known as a special election. Special elections are different than regular elections. In November 2024, voter turnout in Lancaster County was almost 75%; yet, in the special election it...

I remember standing in front of my first-grade classroom, watching my students struggle through a sentence, guessing at words based on pictures rather than decoding them. I had been taught to encourage them to “use the first letter and think about what makes sense.” But my students were failing, and I felt like a failure, too. It wasn’t until I received training and coaching in evidence-based reading instruction that everything changed. Armed with knowledge of the science of how the brain learns to read and a structured curriculum, my students began making incredible gains...

The Democratic primary battle for Pittsburgh mayor, between incumbent Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, looks to be yet another western Pennsylvania-centered test case on the strength of the state’s progressive movement. Mayor Gainey, a progressive Democratic mayor, has stumbled throughout his term and is widely seen as an under-performing official. Meanwhile, Controller O’Connor is another son of a well-known Democratic officeholder—his father was city council president and briefly served as mayor until his death in 2006. He is perceived as...

Over the past decade, the lack of access to in-home care in Pennsylvania has reached a crisis point. From seniors to medically fragile children, more than 400,000 Pennsylvanians rely on various types of in-home care to live their lives with dignity and security, but today, more than 112,500 caregiver shifts are missed and 27% of nursing hours go unfilled every month across Pennsylvania.  These services are under severe strain – and sometimes unavailable altogether – because of staff shortages created by a lack of necessary investment, year after year, from our elected leaders...

What is the state of the City of Pittsburgh? The question is debated even more than usual these days, probably because 2025 will see multiple municipal elections across Pennsylvania. And what people believe about Pittsburgh is subject to the same information distortions that color our national politics. It’s not uncommon, for example, to hear laments about the city’s persistent population and employment losses. I would not be surprised if most regional residents believe that Pittsburgh is the root cause of job and population losses affecting southwestern Pennsylvania. Are they...