Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro announces re-election bid

Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor once considered a frontrunner to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, announced he will seek a second term in office, setting the stage for what many Democrats view as an audition for a future White House run.

The 52-year-old Democrat, who has governed the crucial swing state since January 2023, made the announcement Thursday with planned events in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

“We’ve gotten a whole lot done on issues that have been stuck for decades. But there’s always more to do – more people to help, more Pennsylvanians to protect, more bridges to build,” Shapiro said in a campaign video. “We’re moving our Commonwealth forward.”

The re-election campaign comes at a pivotal moment for Shapiro, whose name has been floated alongside California’s Gavin Newsom, Illinois’s JB Pritzker, Maryland’s Wes Moore and Pete Buttigieg as potential Democratic presidential candidates come 2028. His near-landslide victory in 2022 established him as a rising star capable of winning in a battleground state that Donald Trump carried in 2024.

But unlike some potential rivals who are either term-limited or out of public office, Shapiro must first navigate a competitive race in a midterm year filled with Democratic vitriol towards Trump, offering an early measure of his viability as a national candidate.

As governor, he earned a reputation as a pragmatic moderate who can work across party lines, having secured increased funding for public schools and protecting abortion access. Yet his centrism has drawn criticism from progressives who argue he prioritizes caution over transformative change, particularly on climate policy and education reform.

His vocal support for Israel during the war and total destruction of Gaza also sparked opposition from some Democratic activists who campaigned against his potential vice-presidential nomination. Shapiro, who in his youth volunteered with the Israeli army, emerged as one of the Democratic party’s most prominent pro-Israel voices over the last few years, and had also described what he saw as antisemitism within pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Last April, an arsonist attempted to burn down the governor’s mansion with Shapiro and his family inside following their Passover dinner.

In her recent memoir, the former vice-president Kamala Harris wrote that she declined to select Shapiro as her running mate after he told her he expected to be involved in every decision she made. Shapiro has called her account “complete and utter bullshit” and accused her of spreading “blatant lies” to sell books.

Shapiro has also proved willing to confront Trump directly, filing numerous lawsuits against the administration over withheld state funding and condemning the president’s tariff policies as “reckless” and “dangerous”. He recently called into a Pittsburgh morning radio show to say the nabbing of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was “crazy” and part of a “bully’s weakness”.

“It sounds like a massive nation-building project with basically no plan for what comes next, other than [Trump] stealing Venezuela’s oil to enrich his friends,” Shapiro said.