I was so thrilled when Harris was endorsed by Joe Biden to be the next president (I like her and also Trump is a scumball) that I haven’t until today, been paying much attention to who she might pick as her VP. Two things have changed that. One is how colossally awful Trump’s VP pick is, they guy who is bigoted against people that do not have children and other weirdness.
Anyway, looked today and saw that Josh Shapiro is one of the people being considered to be a VP by Harris DESPITE an association with Jeff Yass, for one, Remember Yass? He’s the one that paid 6 million dollars to Greg Abbott to push school vouchers in Texas versus public education. When it didn’t pass in the Texas Lege, Abbott went after his *enemies* which included Republicans who didn’t help him pass it. He arranged for a local woman, Helen Kerwin, a known Trump supporter as well, to run against DeWayne Burns. I can’t say that I agreed with most of what Burns stood for, but did love that he stood for public education.
Josh Shapiro, of PA, embraces vouchers. This sends a strong message that he is AGAINST public education, which Republicans have been trying to kill since forever.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is being eyed as a potential Democratic vice presidential nominee, but with that attention has come intense scrutiny of his support for a traditionally conservative idea: taxpayer-funded private school vouchers.
Since taking office last year, Shapiro has become the most prominent Democratic voice in the state for such a program. Last summer, he backed a controversial Republican voucher proposal to the chagrin of longtime party allies and influential unions that supported his candidacy — though he ultimately vetoed the language after facing opposition from fellow Democrats.
Despite his high-profile public backing, Shapiro’s embrace of vouchers appears to be a relatively new conviction, according to political insiders and others who have worked with and followed the governor in his two-decade political career. As a state lawmaker in the 2000s, he didn’t advocate for the issue, they recalled, let alone push legislation.
Along with fellow suburban Philadelphia billionaire and SIG co-founder Arthur Dantchik, Greenberg and Yass were at one point the main donors to Students First, a political action committee founded in 2010 to support school choice candidates.
Shapiro accepted $175,000 from that PAC between 2012 and 2016, according to campaign finance records. During that time, he was a Montgomery County commissioner and, by 2016, was running for attorney general.
The donations to Shapiro’s attorney general campaign so troubled Philadelphia’s teachers union that it quietly pulled its endorsement at the last minute, multiple news outlets reported.
The union declined to comment at the time, but a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed to Spotlight PA that the union pulled its endorsement over the Students First donations. (The Pennsylvania State Education Association, a larger, statewide teachers union, continued to back Shapiro in that election.)
During the 2022 gubernatorial race, PACs connected to Yass spent millions during the primary to oppose eventual Republican nominee state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin). One of those PACs, Commonwealth Leaders Fund, ran anti-Shapiro ads during the general election but scaled back then stopped that spending shortly after Shapiro publicly pledged his support for vouchers.
Once elected, Shapiro sought to create such a program as part of the 2023-24 state budget.
One of Shapiro’s closest aides, an old ally from his days in the Pennsylvania Legislature and, later, the Attorney General’s office, resigned in disgrace. The short version is that Mike Vereb, Shapiro’s secretary for legislative affairs – a cabinet-level post – abruptly resigned without explanation.
As it turns out, Shapiro’s good buddy – one he protected for six months after accusations first surfaced – possibly a predator.
A woman in Vereb’s office quit the administration less than a month after taking the job, handing in her resignation on March 6. It was followed by a sexual harassment complaint that depicted Vereb as an out-of-control bully, explicitly suggesting sex acts she could perform for him right there at his Capitol desk. Replete with accounts of Vereb boasting of his sexual prowess so matter-of-factly, it’s a wonder more women haven’t come forward.
Shapiro’s problem here is that the Vereb scandal began to unfold in March. There were hearings and, according to Shapiro’s aides, a thorough investigation, though apparently not a successful one. Vereb stayed on as a top Shapiro aide for six more months. He traveled with the governor, pushed his agenda during budget negotiations, and enjoyed the stature of his state post after driving a young woman out of hers.
It is impossible to imagine that Shapiro didn’t know about the allegations, nor about Vereb’s reputation in Harrisburg. It was “Bro Culture” at its worst.
When Vereb finally resigned his post, it was without explanation from the Shapiro administration, which issued a news release praising him. This from a man whose now glowing national profile was in large part boosted by claiming to be an unequivocal champion for the victims of sexual predators.
It’s plain to see that Shapiro was hoping the whole thing would go away and, when it didn’t, tried to pretend it never happened.
And ugh, read this whole thing
In May, as activism continued to grow over Israel’s lethal violence against civilians in Gaza, Shapiro issued an order aimed at Israel’s critics that revised his administration’s code of conduct to bar state employees from “scandalous or disgraceful” conduct — a vague and subjective directive criticized by the legal director of Pennsylvania’s ACLU as a possible violation of free speech protections.
In a July 23 tweet on X, progressive leader and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner wrote: “Choosing Governor Josh Shapiro for Vice President would be a mistake. Governor Shapiro compared pro-peace protesters to the KKK. That’s simply unacceptable & would stifle the momentum VP Harris has. Hopefully she is looking to build a broad coalition to beat Trump.”
A broad coalition to defeat Donald Trump and the fascistic MAGA movement is exactly what we need. Making Josh Shapiro the nominee for vice president would create internal conflict within that coalition, which is exactly what we don’t need.
