Pennsylvania GOP state chair Lawrence Tabas is stepping down, and he’s going out on a high note.

Two Republicans have emerged as the candidates to replace him: State Sen. Greg Rothman (R-Cumberland) and Allentown businessman Bill Bachenberg.

Last year was a very good year for Pennsylvania Republicans. They delivered the state’s Electoral College votes for Donald Trump, picked up two U.S. House seats, and won the closest U.S. Senate victory in the country.

At the state level, Republican state Sen. Joe Picozzi took a seat from a Democratic incumbent that had been held by Democrats since 1996, and Republican voter registration continues to climb.

As a result, the bar has been set high for who ever wins the chairman’s job.

State committee members and county chairs will pick the state chair at a meeting in Gettysburg on Feb. 8.

Rothman has U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick and U.S. Rep. Dan Mueser (R-Dauphin) in his corner. However, after Bucks County resident Ted Christian dropped out and threw his support to Rothman, Bachenberg entered the fray.

Bill Bachenberg

Rothman has been interested in Republican politics since Ronald Reagan was running for president. In high school, he wrote an editorial for his school’s paper in support of Reagan. On election day, his parents allowed him to skip school “as long as I worked the polls.” Rothman was one of the few Republican students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a school, “so far left it almost fell off the map.” While there, he “harnessed (his) debating skills.” He took a semester off to work for Jack Kemp, who was running for vice president on the 1996 ticket with Bob Dole. When Kemp lost, he returned and finished college.

After graduation, his dad asked him what he wanted to do with his life. Rothman said he wanted to go to Washington, D.C. But his father convinced him to “come home and be a conservative and work in the private sector.” Rothman joined the family real estate company. In 1991, he enlisted in the Marine Corps during Operation Desert Storm. He rose to staff sergeant and was honorably discharged in 2001. He was appointed by the president to the board of the National Veterans Business Development Corp. and was a founder of the Harrisburg Young Professionals.

Rothman helped “my old friend, Rick Santorum” run for president in 2012, working for Santorum in Iowa and New Hampshire. Rothman was elected state representative in 2015 and served until 2022. He was then elected state senator to a district formerly held by Jake Corman, that had been redistricted to include Cumberland County.

“In the last election, I knocked on 20,000 doors,” Rothman said. “I walked 880 miles in 10 months.”

Bachenberg says he kept getting calls from “grassroots” Trump supporters urging him to run. He formed an exploratory committee and on Dec. 30 threw his hat in the ring.

Bachenberg spent his career running businesses, including the technology firm DBSi. He owns a shooting range called Lehigh Valley Sporting Clays and is first vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Bachenberg’s supporters held a flag wave for him in northeast Philadelphia on Saturday.

A fundraiser for Trump, Bachenberg was an alternative elector in 2020 and an elector in 2024.

In business, “some people have called me a change agent,” said Bachenberg. For his technology business, “We re-engineered ourselves five times in 33 years…massive changes. And if we hadn’t, we would have perished. And our party is about in the same position now. President Trump came along and offered the citizens of the state and the country a different image of what we could  be.”

“Good politicians listen to their constituents,” said Bachenberg. “I listened to our committee members, and they’re frustrated.”

Bachenberg and his wife–who served 21 years in the Air Force and National Guard and was deployed to Iraq and Bosnia–run Camp Freedom, a charity for disabled first responders an veterans so they can experience time in the outdoors.

Rothman said he knows how to help Republican candidates win.

“From 2015 through 2022, I ran in seven electoral contests and won all seven of them,” said Rothman. “I’m an activist. We need more conservative activists to run for office and win.”

The chairman should unite the activists, committee people, donors and candidates, he said.

“I’ve had success at all four levels,” he said. Republicans just won all the statewide races and need to build in their success.

And he believes, in 2026, Republicans can win the governorship.

“Josh Shapiro can be beaten,” said Rothman. “But we’re not going to beat him if we say we can’t beat him.”