How Will the Shapiro-Garrity Match Play Out?

Two-term GOP state Treasurer Stacy Garrity officially entered the race for governor in late August and Pennsylvania’s Republican Party will soon endorse her at its upcoming fall meeting.

That’s how eager the party is to avoid Doug Mastriano 2.0. Mastriano, the GOP’s disastrous gubernatorial nominee in 2022, limped across the finish line then, taking less than 42% of the vote against Democrat Josh Shapiro.

The task now for Garrity: quickly coalesce the GOP around her, grab the usual endorsements valued by Republicans in a primary, boost her name ID while pointing out key parts of her biography, and raise a decent amount of early money.

Garrity has broken the proverbial glass ceiling in two male-dominated fields: powdered metals and the Army. Of course, Democrats are usually all in for that – but much less so when it’s a conservative woman triumphing.

All this should help isolate state Sen. Mastriano and hopefully force him to realize it’s not in the cards for him to run again.

Shapiro got a big boost in 2022 because he had no Democratic primary opposition, and the GOP had to slog its way through a 15-person primary (nine made the primary ballot). It’s important to remember that Shapiro shrewdly spent several million dollars meddling in the GOP primary to boost Mastriano. Like everyone else, Shapiro knew Mastriano would be the easiest Republican for him to beat in November – which proved correct.

It’ll be a net positive for Garrity if she can focus all her energies on Shapiro sooner rather than later.     

As the 2026 gubernatorial campaign gears up, even as the important judicial retention campaigns hit their stride now, let’s hope the working press soon asks both Garrity and Shapiro the same simple question: If elected in 2026, will you serve out your full four-year term? Garrity’s prompt answer will be “yes.” Shapiro’s answer is likely everything but “yes.”

It’s tough for a campaign to serve more than one purpose – winning – but Shapiro’s will need to do just that: securing his re-election race while also facilitating his all-but-certain 2028 presidential effort. (A recent Echelon Insights national poll has Shapiro at 3% overall in a potential Democratic presidential primary in California; among Black voters, he was at 1%, just above former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg, at 0%.)

In July, as Garrity’s gubernatorial candidacy was becoming clearer, several unions that had backed her re-election last year for Treasurer went public with a clear warning: if she ran against Shapiro for governor, they would never support her again. As I wrote then:

“Seems a couple of Building Trades union chieftains out of Philly wanted to set the record straight – though they endorsed Garrity last year in her re-election for Treasurer, she is persona non grata to them if she challenges Shapiro for governor, as is widely expected. And if she dares to challenge Shapiro, they’ll never support her again.”

It must be noted that Garrity is term limited in her role as Treasurer. She cannot, by statute, run for state Auditor General. And she is not an attorney.

How will Shapiro’s team respond now to Garrity, given that at her second inauguration in January the governor described her as hard working and mission focused? We’re already hearing lots of rhetoric on national issues and against Trump. Expect more, given that’s the easy play in a midterm election like 2026.

Of course, Democrats will go after Garrity for her inexcusable sins, in their words, of being both pro-Trump and pro-life (even though President Trump has won two of the past three presidential elections here). It’s a different dynamic when Trump is not on the ballot.

In last year’s election, Garrity took more votes than anyone except Trump, who when the entire tally had been counted, ended up with just 752 more votes than Garrity – even though 120,000 more votes were cast in the presidential contest than in the race for Treasurer.

While Trump beat Kamala Harris by 120,266 votes, Garrity beat her opponent, Erin McClelland, by nearly 427,000 votes.

Nominating a female candidate will also allow the GOP to put in sharper focus Shapiro’s biggest failing to date: his stewardship of a sexual harassment case perpetrated by one of his long-time, top male aides on a junior female member of his legislative liaison team.

The case was settled but the victim was saddled with a confidentiality clause.

It will be interesting to watch the governor navigate this issue as he squares off against Garrity. Perhaps it’s time for more Democratic funded pro Mastriano ads?