Abington-native Gov. Josh Shapiro could be hitting the campaign trail for the White House next month.
Shapiro's name has come up as a possible presidential or vice presidential candidate after President Joe Biden's announcement Sunday that he was dropping out of the race. By Sunday afternoon, the speculation became more focused on Shapiro as vice president on a ticketed led by Kamala Harris.
Vice President Harris said Sunday that she will seek the 2024 Democratic nomination and Shapiro posted a statement of support for Harris soonafter on X, formerly Twitter.
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"The best path foward for the Democratic Party is to quickly unite behind Vice President Harris and refocus on winning the presidency," Shapiro wrote. "The contrast in this race could not be clearer and the road to victory in November runs right through Pennsylvania — where this collective work began."
Ultimately,the party's convention delegateswill decide on who will run against former President Donald Trump when more than 4,000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention meets over four nights starting Aug. 19 in Chicago.
Here's a closer look at Shapiro's Montgomery County roots, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and his political rise from Pennsylvania politics.
Josh Shapiro: From Missouri to Montgomery County
Born in 1973 while his father was a medical officer at a naval base in Kansas City, Missouri, Shapiro’s family moved to Abington just a few years after he was born.
Shapiro met his wife, Lori, when the two attended high school at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr. They got married after they both attended college.
Shapiro said before his bid for Pa. governor in 2021 it was his parents, his father a pediatrician and his mother a teacher, who inspired him to enter public service.
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Shapiro's mother helped him advocate for "refuseniks," Soviet Jews who were refused permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union, usually to Israel, in the late 1960s through the 1970s.
“These were Soviet Jewish children and families who were refused the ability to leave the Soviet Union, to practice their faith and to live free lives. And my mom served on those issues and she got me inspired to work on those issues as well,” Shapiro said during an interview with this news organization shortly after kicking off his campaign for governor in 2021.
He started an international letter-writing program between American and Soviet children to raise awareness of religious persecution. The family of Shapiro’s pen-pal in that campaign, a boy named Avi, was able to come to America in time to attend Shapiro’s bar mitzvah before being granted asylum in Israel.
Josh Shapiro's early political career
After graduating high school, Josh Shapiro attended the University of Rochester, in New York, graduating with a political science degree in 1995.
Shapiro worked on Capitol Hill for several years, taking night courses at the Georgetown University Law Center before earning a law degree in 2002.
After the birth of their first child, Sophia, the Shapiro family moved back to Abington in 2004 and Shapiro made his first successful run for office representing the 153rd District in the Pennsylvania State House, serving on the appropriations, finance, insurance, judiciary and state government committees.
Shapiro said he felt “called to service” back in Abington and thought representing his neighbors in Harrisburg was the best way to respond.
At the start of his second term in the General Assembly, Shapiro helped broker a deal that appointed a new Speaker of the House in a divided state legislature.
Democrats led the House by only a single seat in 2007, but neither they nor the GOP could agree on who would fill the chamber’s head official before that legislative session began that January.
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In Pennsylvania, the House is prohibited from holding an official session if the speaker, or speaker pro tempore, is absent.
Shapiro’s unprecedented bipartisan solution was to nominate former Republican Rep. Dennis O’Brien to lead the House. O’Brien named Shapiro as deputy speaker after his appointment. Shapiro was appointed as the chair of the commissioners after winning that election, the first time a Democrat held the position in over a century.
The die-hard Philadelphia sports fan would serve three terms in the state house before serving as Montgomery County commissioner in 2012, before being elected as Pennsylvania's Attorney General in 2016.
Church sex abuse, opioid crisis and I-95 collapse casts Josh Shapiro into spotlight
Shapiro served two terms as the state's top prosecutor — he ran and won again in 2020 — which included several high profile initiatives:
- In 2018, he released a grand jury report outlining thesexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and steps that diocesan leaders took to cover up the crimes.
- Shapiro's office drafted severalcritiques of, and recommendations for, the state Department of Environmental Protection's handling of the unconventional oil and gas industry.
- He joined several other state attorney generals to reach amulti-billion-dollar settlement with opioid companies in 2021 for their role in the drug abuse epidemic.
In the same Penn State parking lot he taught his four children to ride their bikes in Abington, Shapiro would highlight those wins and other career achievements as he launch his gubernatorial campaign in October 2021.
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Shortly after the Supreme Court issued a ruling that upended Roe V. Wade and kicked reproductive rights back to the states in June 2022, Shapiro joined then-Gov. Tom Wolf, also a Democrat, in promising that Pennsylvania wouldn't cooperate with any state seeking to prosecute doctors in the commonwealth who provide abortions to out-of-state residents.
Shapiro defeated Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Trump die-hard and popular candidate among the MAGA movement, in a landslide victory that November.
As governor, he has focused on expanding access to education, improving health care, and fostering economic development.
Shapiro played a significant role in the response to theI-95 collapsein Philadelphia, ensuring swift action and coordination to reopen the crucial highway ahead of schedule.
In recent polls, Shapiro has shown strong numbers compared to Vice President Kamala Harris, indicating his potential appeal as a vice-presidential candidate alongside her.
Chris Ullery is the Philadelphia Hub Data Reporter for the USA Today Network. Reach him at cullery@couriertimes.com or find him on Twitter at @ulleryatinell.
