Gov. Josh Shapiro portrays himself as a governor who gets stuff done.
Republican Senate Pro Tempore Kim Ward disagrees.
“I would say that he is much more of a political animal than he is actually a ‘get-stuff-done’ governor,” the Westmoreland County Republican told DVJournal during a podcast interview.
“He has 26 people, I understand from our appropriations folks, 26 people working in his office that, doing all that social media, following him around with cameras,” Ward said. “Gov. (Tom) Wolf had 12. Gov. Shapiro has 26, and there’s a reason for that, right?”
The reason she believes is that Shapiro has his eye on a White House run.
Ward drew another contrast between the state’s current Democratic governor and the previous one.
Unlike Wolf, she said, Shapiro doesn’t send bills to the legislature addressing his priorities.
“When I worked with Gov. Wolf, they would say, ‘Here is our priority,’ and they would send over something that they worked on legislatively. Then we would all go to work on the governor’s priority,” Ward said. “But we don’t have that from Gov. Shapiro.
“He talked about marijuana legalization and skill games last year. We never received a bill. He just kind of says, ‘Here’s what I want to do. Let the legislature handle it, and I’ll sign it.'”
Ward says that isn’t the way to handle politics in Harrisburg.
“Maybe it’s his way of governing. But that’s not the way to get anything done with the legislature. He has to take a lead on these things. He’s got to get out of the middle of the road, get off the yellow line and let’s go. Let’s get to work.”
Ward said she and her fellow Republicans weren’t impressed by Shapiro’s budget address either — all 90 minutes of it. His $51.4 billion proposed 2025 budget would use $4.5 billion from the state’s budget surplus and rainy-day fund.
“Well, that will not be happening, as far as the Republican leadership and the Republican Senate are concerned,” said Ward. “Because his budget, well, it dipped in (the rainy day fund), and it took us way down in the next couple of years. It takes us into a deficit, so we won’t even have a rainy day fund.”
Ward said Shapiro’s budget trick of relying on revenue from skill games and marijuana legalization, which aren’t even the law yet, is “unreasonable.”
“Even if those would pass and get up and running, you’re not going to see that money this year,” said Ward. “And it’s a guess on the money.”
On education, the biggest budget item, Ward said Republicans are going to continue pressing for more Lifeline Scholarships for children trapped in failing schools.
“We keep pouring more and more money into public education and schools are still failing,” said Ward. Meanwhile, Republicans are asking for a relatively modest $100 million for their school choice initiatives, which Shapiro has said he supported.
Until he wasn’t.
“I heard the governor say the other day again, ‘I’m fully supportive of vouchers for these schools.’ And then, he blue-lined them. He is not.”
Shapiro had campaigned on providing more funding for the Lifeline Scholarships but in his first budget, when the Democrat-controlled House balked, Shapiro used a line-item veto and penciled it out.
“We have a duty to the next generation to give them every possible tool to succeed,” said Ward. “I’m going to keep fighting.”
The national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee released a list of state legislatures to flip in 2025 and 2026. The Pennsylvania House is on it, but not the Pennsylvania Senate. It’s a sign, Ward said, of the GOP’s growing strength in Pennsylvania.
She said it’s really exciting that Republicans flipped a seat in northeast Philadelphia with Sen. Joe Picozzi.
“I think they’re not going to take the Senate away,” said Ward, despite having more money than the GOP. “I’m sure they’ll be in here with millions of dollars still targeting, but they’re not going to win it.”
