Shapiro, the state’s two-term attorney general, scored a landslide 14-point victory over Republican challenger Doug Mastriano in last week’s midterm elections, breaking state campaign finance records and becoming the first candidate since 1966 to succeed his governor of the same party in Pennsylvania. . Democrats in the state also won a seat in the U.S. Senate — just the second time since the Civil War that the state elected two Democrats to the legislature — while winning a majority of the state’s congressional seats and possibly even control of the House of Representatives. of the state. first time in 12 years. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said the election results showed voters’ willingness to protect abortion rights and the sanctity of elections from being undermined by far-right Republicans who promoted former President Donald Trump’s fraud lies to voters in defeat in 2020. “In many ways, it was a triumph over extremism as much as anything else, and we probably underestimated that in the election,” Casey said. Shapiro, who is set to be sworn in on Jan. 17, will take the reins in a state divided by bitter partisanship over voting laws and the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic by his predecessor, outgoing Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. That helped increase the record number of vetoes by a governor dating back to the 1970s. Shapiro will likely face battles with Republicans who control the state Senate over the state’s grid of business, such as the budget. And, with the 2024 presidential election looming, big questions remain about the state’s election laws after three years of partisan gridlock, ongoing court battles over mail-in voting and Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election that continue to harm the state. But Shapiro stressed that cross-over support from Republican voters helped him win against Mastriano, a far-right senator who has peddled conspiracy theories, backed a blanket ban on abortion and done more than any other gubernatorial candidate in the nation to overturn presidential elections. 2020 elections. Vowing to run the state’s affairs with bipartisanship in mind, Shapiro said he has a “mandate” to bring people together and pledged to work with Republicans at the state Capitol. “I think it’s clear, you know, I’m not going to do whatever I want, and they’re not going to do whatever they want,” Shapiro said in an interview Friday with WILK-FM in Scranton. “But there is a lot we can do together and that will be my focus.” One conservative advocate, Leo Knepper, political director of the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, said he was concerned that Republican lawmakers would push back on conservative principles because of the size of Shapiro’s victory. “I think some of those Republicans will have their eyes on the fact that he won by a pretty significant margin and what that margin looked like in their districts,” Knepper said. About 6 in 10 independents backed Shapiro in the election, compared with about 3 in 10 who backed Mastriano, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of more than 3,100 voters in the state. Shapiro says he will veto any legislation he sees as undermining abortion rights or voting rights. But in a nod to the possibility of Democrats controlling the state House of Representatives, he told KYW-AM radio in Philadelphia that it appears he “won’t have to wield that veto pen very much.” The Associated Press has not called two state House races that will determine which party controls the majority. County boards of elections are expected to certify the results later this week. Shapiro entered the race as a dominant figure in the state Democratic Party, a two-time statewide fundraiser and featured speaker — someone even Republicans say is a gifted politician. He rallied the Democratic Party, its leaders and allies behind his candidacy, swept the primaries of challengers and ran down the middle on key issues, including energy in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state. It gutted Wolf’s top priority on climate change, an effort bitterly contested by Republicans to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil fuel state to impose carbon pricing. He proposed a big cut in the corporate income tax and opened the door to Republican plans to allow broader state funding of private and public schools. And he rejected Wolf’s policies on COVID-19, saying he would not issue mask mandates or business closures in a pandemic — even though his office had defended them in court. In post-election interviews, he emphasized that he would focus on his top priorities of improving schools, security and the economy. Shapiro must also assemble a cabinet and name a replacement to complete the final two years of his tenure as Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement officer. Shapiro will take office with the state on solid financial footing, thanks to strong tax collections and billions in federal pandemic aid. But the state Supreme Court is considering a legal challenge to how the state funds public schools, a lawsuit that could force major changes to how the state distributes billions of dollars in school funding. He will be in the middle of the battle over climate change, facing pressure from environmental advocates to crack down on global-warming greenhouse gas emissions, while labor unions – whose members work in power plants, pipelines and refineries – say he has promised not to block major new gas infrastructure projects. Shapiro will also have to wage a partisan battle to update Pennsylvania’s election laws, which has dominated the state Capitol for the past two years. Many Republicans on the campaign trail — including Mastriano and nearly every other candidate in the GOP primary — have called for the elimination of absentee voting by mail in Pennsylvania. For his part, Shapiro said he would pursue changes to election laws — Election Day voter registration and automatic voter registration — that have seen no traction in the Republican-controlled Legislature. With Pennsylvania sure to be a battleground in the 2024 presidential election, the focus on election laws isn’t fading. On Sunday, Mastriano conceded, issuing a statement acknowledging his defeat and asking his supporters to give Shapiro a chance to lead. But he also said work needed to be done on elections to make them “transparent, secure and more quickly decided.” “Pennsylvanians deserve to have faith in our elections,” Mastriano said.
Associated Press reporter Nuha Dolby in New York contributed to this report. Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: twitter.com/timelywriter.
Learn more about the issues and factors playing out in the midterm elections at And follow AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at
