Stacy Garrity leans on military experience, veterans issues in uphill Pa. governor’s race against Josh Shapiro

State treasurer and Republican nominee for governor Stacy Garrity held a rally Thursday at the Whitemarsh Valley Event Center in Fort Washington, where she spoke on issues related to veterans.

“Pennsylvania’s home to 700,000 veterans, and they deserve a governor who will fight for them as hard as they fought for us,” she said.

At the midterm campaign event, Garrity laid out what she called “common sense proposals” on “how we can support our veterans.”

Garrity served for three decades in the U.S. Army Reserve, retiring with the rank of colonel. Her military career included three deployments in support of Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. She received two Bronze Stars and the Legion of Merit.

During her deployment, Garrity served at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, where she handled detainee processing at the prison. She was also responsible for family visitations and interpreters, and she served as a Red Cross liaison. While Abu Ghraib received a lot of attention as a notorious torture site during the early years of the war in Iraq, Garrity was dubbed “The Angel of the Desert” because of her attention to prisoners’ well-being at Bucca.

Garrity has called her military career “the honor of my lifetime.”

“Had I not hit my mandatory retirement date, I would not be standing here talking to you as a state treasurer and the nominee for governor because I would still be serving,” she said at an event in Port Richmond last month.

She added that commitment has transferred to her current role.

“I have one goal and one goal in mind when I wake up every day,” she said. “How do I make the lives of Pennsylvanians better? My only ambition is to serve.”

Garrity has made outreach to veterans a recurring part of her campaign for governor, holding events around Pennsylvania, including a roundtable in Erie, a rally in Bucks County and another campaign stop in Shamokin. At those stops, she discussed proposals to help veterans find jobs, obtain housing and access health care, while highlighting her own military service.

At the For Washington event, Matthew Giacobbe, a Philadelphia veteran who served in the Air Force for more than three decades, said, “She’s one of us.”

“We try and go to as many American Legions and VFWs because that’s where the group of people that support her are,” said Giacobbe, who now works with the campaign. “We have a ton of veterans all throughout Pennsylvania supporting us.”

Garrity is proposing annual tax credits of $3,000 for businesses that hire veterans full time and $1,500 for part-time hires, available after one year and renewable while the veteran remains employed. She also wants to streamline professional licensing by enforcing military credentialing laws and eliminating redundant training requirements.

Her plan calls for nonprofit partnerships to build veterans’ housing villages with supportive services, alongside expanded rural telehealth, broadband and diagnostic facilities. She would also establish a permanent Gold Star Family Registry, with state officials conducting annual outreach.

Garrity would seek a constitutional amendment expanding full property tax exemptions to honorably discharged veterans with 100% disabilities regardless of wartime service, strengthen surviving-spouse protections and prorate benefits from the application date. She also supports excluding ABLE savings account contributions from income calculations used to determine eligibility for disabled veterans’ property tax exemptions.

In addition to her platform on issues related to veterans, Giacobbe said he appreciated her work as state treasurer.

“I can’t imagine how many millions of dollars to Pennsylvanians that was unclaimed property and money,” he said. “And she makes it so simple, her office. You just fill the form out online and next thing you know, you got a check coming in.”

Jennifer Payton said that she believes Garrity is good on veterans’ issues but is voting for Garrity based on her economic plans.

“She is fiscally responsible,” Payton said. And “she believes in the rule of law.”

As for incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro, he “says a bunch of stuff” but “he doesn’t do it.”

“We’re supposed to have school choice. We don’t have school choice,” Payton said. “I don’t get it. There’s no backbone.”

Garrity’s campaign has lagged behind Shapiro’s, despite high hopes early on by Republicans who paved her way through the primary. She has consistently fallen behind in fundraising and polling.

Sam Chen, a Republican political strategist who says he twice voted for Garrity for treasurer, said she faces headwinds that favor Democrats because of President Donald Trump’s high disapproval ratings. Garrity, he said, made a “misstep” when she traveled to the White House to accept an endorsement.

“I think Republicans that have consistently been distant from the president are likely to do better in this cycle,” Chen said. “It’s clear that the environment is against the president.”

However, Payton said her vote is for Garrity.

“It didn’t matter,” she said about Trump’s endorsement.