Who is Gov. Josh Shapiro, a possible Harris VP pick?
Written by ABC Audio ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on July 24, 2024
(WASHINGTON) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has been gaining attention in the political world for taking on Republicans on major issues such as abortion access and immigration.
And now he could be bringing his political skills to the White House with sources telling ABC News that Shapiro is a front-runner to become Kamala Harris’ running mate.
Shapiro, 51, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Dresher, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1995.
Shapiro spent years on Capitol Hill working for several Democratic members of Congress, including Sens. Carl Levin and Robert Torricelli. During that time, Shapiro earned a law degree from Georgetown University in 2002.
In 2004, he won election for the 153rd district in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and was reelected three times. In 2011, Shapiro was elected to the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners and remained on the board for five years.
In 2016, Shapiro was elected Pennsylvania’s attorney general. He was reelected in 2020 with over 3.4 million votes.
During his tenure, Shapiro took on high-profile cases, including investigations into alleged sex abuse in the Catholic Church and probes of pharmaceutical companies over the opioid crisis.
Shapiro also pushed back against former President Donald Trump’s conservative policies, including the proposed travel ban from citizens of Muslim-majority countries. Following the 2020 election, then-Attorney General Shapiro fought against several lawsuits that were filed contesting the results.
Two years ago, Shapiro ran for Pennsylvania governor and beat Republican challenger Doug Mastriano by more than 792,000 votes.
Shapiro has spoken out against abortion restrictions and pushed policies to expand reproductive rights.
“As governor, I will always uphold our state’s Constitution and protect a woman’s right to make decisions over her own body and have the health care services she needs,” he said in a statement last week following a development in a Pennsylvania-based abortion case.
Shapiro has denied repeated calls from state Republicans to deploy the National Guard in response to the influx of migrants in the state.
“The last thing in the world I’m going to do is put the brave women and men of the Pennsylvania National Guard’s lives at risk to be part of some political squabble at the border that [Texas] Gov. [Greg] Abbott has created,” Shapiro said in March.
Shapiro, who is Jewish, has also expressed his support for Israel in its ongoing conflict against Hamas and called out rising antisemitism in the state and country.
In December, he criticized then-University of Pennsylvania’s President Liz Magill following a congressional hearing on antisemitism on campuses. Magill did not directly respond to Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s questions about whether reportedly antisemitic rhetoric, including calls for “genocide of Jews,” constituted harassment.
“Frankly, I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn genocide,” Shapiro said on Dec. 6.
Magill resigned five days later.
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