On school vouchers, fracking and Palestine, Shapiro draws criticism and praise

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As Republicans bash and Democrats tout Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a potential running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris, they have been focusing on a few key moments from his political career.

A sexual harassment scandal involving one of his former top aides is perhaps the most controversial episode from the year and seven months he’s served in the state’s top job. Beyond that, he’s taken heat from both sides for crafting but ultimately rejecting a plan to create state-funded school vouchers, which families could use to pay for private and religious school tuition.

He’s also been both praised and criticized for investigating natural gas fracking companies and then partnering with them, and for taking strong positions on Palestine and Israel’s war against Hamas.

Shapiro and his supporters, meanwhile, point to his role in quickly reopening I-95, an economically critical East Coast transport route, following a fire that damaged a section of the highway in Philadelphia last year.

In the coming weeks they’ll likely also tout his accomplishments during his six years as state attorney general, including investigations of opioid manufacturers, and of widespread child sexual abuse by Catholic priests across Pennsylvania.

Straying from Democratic Party orthodoxy

Apart from the sex harassment case involving a former Shapiro aide, the hottest-button issue from his career maybe be his support — and then withdrawal of support — for private school vouchers.

Shapiro’s children attend a private Jewish school, and as a candidate he supported vouchers, reportedly after being influenced by Joel Greenberg, the billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group.

Greenberg and his fellow Susquehanna co-founder, conservative activist Jeff Yass, are major political donors in Pennsylvania and top funders of the state’s school choice movement.

During state budget negotiations last year, Shapiro made a deal with Republican legislators to fund a $100 million voucher program for children in “low-achieving” districts, in exchange for them agreeing to higher state education spending overall. After the Democrat-led House refused to support a budget that included vouchers, the governor line-item vetoed the program, saying he wanted to avoid a budget impasse.

Senate Republicans responded angrily, saying the governor had “decided to betray the good faith agreement we reached.” Democrats said they were confused by Shapiro’s enthusiasm for a project fiercely opposed by teachers unions and other core party constituencies.

Last month a coalition of education advocacy group from across the country urged Harris not to pick Shapiro as her running mate because of his stance on vouchers. Some Republicans, meanwhile, continue to stew over his backtracking on the plan last year.

“He failed to lead the Democratic House to see why this is important, and he failed because he left all of these kids out there floundering,” Kim Ward, the Republican president pro tempore of the Pennsylvania Senate, recently told the Wall Street Journal. The conservative Commonwealth Foundation has started running TV and newspaper ads targeting Shapiro, in part, for the veto.

Taking frackers to task, then embracing them

Another area where Shapiro has offended some within both the Democratic and Republican camps is energy policy and fracking, a sensitive issue in a state with major coal and gas industries.

As attorney general he won praise from environmentalists for going after fracking companies over the harmful impacts of shale gas production, and more recently for proposing a “cap and invest” program to reduce industrial carbon emissions. Yet they’ve also criticized him for partnering with the state’s fossil fuel industries and promoting use of fracked natural gas.

Critics on the right, meanwhile, argue that Shapiro’s carbon plan and his proposal to promote renewable energy would make the state’s power supply more costly and less reliable, and they say he’s been too tough on energy producers and unsupportive of Republican proposals for permitting reform.

His strong stances on Israel and Palestine have also drawn polarized responses, with activists on the left saying they are unacceptable in a vice presidential nominee.

Shapiro “stands out among the current field of potential running mates as being egregiously bad on Palestine,” David Klion wrote in The New Republic last month.

The governor, who has close ties to Israel, stoutly defended the country’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, drawing a rebuke from Muslim groups who said he ignored the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths.

Shapiro has been a prominent critic of universities who he said were not acting quickly against pro-Palestine campus demonstrations, at one point comparing protesters to white supremacists. In December he condemned former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill’s congressional testimony on the school’s response to alleged antisemitism, a few days before Magill resigned under pressure.

Projecting a can-do image

Shapiro has attempted to brand himself, apparently with some success, as the guy who “gets s–t done,” a phrase he started using on occasion after the I-95 collapse last June due to a tanker fire.

After he initially warned it could take months to repair the road, temporarily lanes were up and running just 12 days later. Shapiro released $7 million in state funds and the federal government kicked in $3 million, with President Biden promising the feds would cover much of the cost for permanent repairs. At the reopening Shapiro led a triumphant rally of sports mascots, union workers, federal legislators and various local personalities.

The Commonwealth Foundation argues the governor has overstated his accomplishments. Shapiro “Ain’t Got Sh*t Done,” the conservative group says in its ads. It claims his first year and a half in office saw fewer bills passed than during any Pennsylvania gubernatorial term in at least 50 years, and fewer than in other states with politically divided governments.

Expect also to hear about Shapiro’s activities as attorney general, which paved the way for his successful run for governor.

In 2018 his office released the report on child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Pennsylvania, finding bishops and other leaders covered up abuse of more than 1,000 victims by more than 300 priests over 70 years, and persuaded victims not to report the abuse and law enforcement not to investigate it. The report drew international attention and raised the recently elected Shapiro’s profile.

He was additionally one of 41 state attorney generals who investigated drug companies, including several based in Pennsylvania, for their roles in the deadly opioid epidemic. The settlement in the case is expected to bring $1 billion to the state to pay for drug prevention, law enforcement, health care and other programs.