Gov. Josh Shapiro cruised to reelection in Pennsylvania. Now the real campaign begins.
The governor staked his reputation on helping Pennsylvania Democrats win up and down the ballot, a move which could bolster his national standing.
CAMP HILL, Pa. — Gov. Josh Shapiro cruised to reelection on Tuesday, trouncing his Republican opponent, Stacy Garrity, in a decisive victory that strengthens the Democrat’s prospects for a 2028 presidential run.
The Associated Press called the race for Shapiro a minute after polls closed across the state. The resounding win for Shapiro, 53, of Abington Township, cements his dominance in the critical battleground state that voted for President Donald Trump just two years ago.
But a more substantial test of Shapiro’s strength came later Tuesday, as he staked his reputation on helping Democrats win up and down the ballot. The move could bolster his national standing at a time when the Democratic Party searches for a new leader to carry it into the post-Trump era. Shapiro invested $10 million of his campaign war chest to successfully flip four congressional seats, and to win a Democratic trifecta of control in Harrisburg for the first time since 1993.
“Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the trust and the confidence,” Shapiro said, addressing supporters in Camp Hill. “This is a good night for our commonwealth. It’s looking like it could be a pretty good night for our country, too.”
» READ MORE: Why Josh Shapiro put himself on the line for the midterms — but still won’t talk about 2028
Garrity, 62, meanwhile, struggled to persuade GOP donors to contribute to her campaign against the popular incumbent, despite receiving the state Republican Party’s endorsement unprecedentedly early in September 2025 and an endorsement from Trump in January.
A poll conducted by The Inquirer, New York Times, and Siena University found a quarter of GOP voters in the final weeks of the campaign still did not know enough about Garrity or her platform to form an opinion of her. For months, she was unable to purchase TV ads, while Shapiro was spending millions defining her as data centers’ “No. 1 fan.” An eleventh-hour push by skill games industry backers allowed Garrity to gain some advertising momentum in the final days of the campaign, but it was not enough to change Tuesday’s result.
In an election night speech in Tunkhannock, Garrity congratulated Shapiro, adding that “his success is our success.”
“It is my hope that the campaign we’ve run, the issues we’ve addressed, and the solutions we’ve presented are a reminder to them that Pennsylvania just doesn’t deserve but needs a full-time chief executive,” Garrity said.
Beyond the governor’s race
For months, public opinion polls showed Shapiro holding a double-digit lead over Garrity with strong backing from his Democratic base, solid favorability from independent voters, and even a notable sliver of support from voters who backed Trump two years ago. He also maintained record-high job approval ratings among modern Pennsylvania governors at the same time Trump’s approval ratings hit new lows.
Shapiro’s strong polling lead allowed him to focus his attention on rebuilding and securing his grip on the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, coordinating across state and congressional campaigns for a unified strategy in an election year that was already likely to benefit Democrats as the party out of power in Washington.
Shapiro over the last year has more clearly signaled his intentions to enter the 2028 presidential race. In his second four-year term as Pennsylvania governor, he may need to navigate a delicate balancing act in his job leading the nation’s fifth-most-populous state while campaigning nationally. Pennsylvania voters are split over whether they want to see him run for the nation’s highest office, an Inquirer/New York Times/Siena poll found. (He would not have to resign to campaign for president, but would be required to resign if he was elected.)
Shapiro has been an elected official for two decades, previously serving as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, a Montgomery County commissioner, and a state representative. In 2024, he was on the short list to become Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, boosting his name recognition on the national stage. Since then, he has continued to elevate his profile and lay the groundwork for a White House run, including publishing a memoir, sitting for national network TV interviews, and creating a federal political action committee that he can use to fundraise nationally and more easily fund a presidential bid.
» READ MORE: Gov. Josh Shapiro launches a federal PAC — the strongest signal yet he’s eyeing a 2028 run
Shapiro on Tuesday ran alongside Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, a former Democratic state lawmaker from outside Pittsburgh, and the first Black person ever elected to Pennsylvania’s executive branch. Davis, 37, will return to his position as the presiding officer of the state Senate — a role that could take on new importance, depending on how far Shapiro makes it in a presidential campaign.
A high-stakes bid
Shapiro wagered his electoral success in the midterm election not on his own reelection, but on his ability to help Democrats flip four Pennsylvania congressional seats and secure the U.S. House, which they did.
He pitched himself and other Democrats on the ballot as a backstop to Trump’s “chaos, cruelty, and corruption” — an appeal that broke through to multiple voters Tuesday. Some said they want to see him run for higher office soon.
In East Bradford Township, Doug Swartz said he cast a vote for “future President Shapiro.”
Swartz, 66, said he has been impressed with the governor’s political career, starting when he was a state representative.
“I think he’s the kind of guy who can be a consensus builder, and shown that he can reach across the aisle and play well with everyone,” Swartz said. “He’s got a great record on taxes, and, obviously the cost of living is out of his control.”
Shapiro also staked his political capital into flipping the state Senate to Democratic control, in efforts to bring a Democratic trifecta to Harrisburg. The governor has set an aspirational agenda to pass a number of top Democratic policy priorities that have been on the back burner for decades, including increasing the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour, codifying abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, and allocating a new funding stream for mass transit. Clearing the way to pass those policies notches another win for Shapiro and strengthens his list of achievements headed into a 2028 Democratic primary.
The Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Campaign Committee noted that while Democrats held a trifecta in 1993 after a member changed party registration, it had been more than 50 years since voters elected a Democratic state Senate.
» READ MORE: Democrats win trifecta control of Pennsylvania Senate, House and governorship for the first time since 1993
If Republicans had maintained control of the state Senate, Shapiro — who has long branded himself a bipartisan dealmaker — risked again leading a split legislature that had become known for its dysfunction and gridlock.
Garrity, for her part, ran her campaign on a message that under Shapiro’s leadership, Pennsylvania is lagging other states in national rankings in its economic growth, education, and more. But that message hardly reached voters until the final days, when she received more than $6 million from skill games industry backers after she voiced her support for the industry during the race’s lone debate on Oct. 7.
Initially, Garrity was poised to be a more formidable candidate against Shapiro, after Republicans coalesced around her early in an effort to avoid suffering another double-digit defeat, as in Shapiro’s race in 2022 against far-right State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin). Republicans at the time blamed Mastriano for downballot losses and vowed not to repeat their mistakes. (On Tuesday, Shapiro spoke from the same stage at the Penn Harris Hotel where Mastriano held his election night party in 2022, though the Republican took days to concede.)
In the end, Garrity was unable to raise the millions of dollars necessary to rival Shapiro’s campaign hauls, and saw little national support as national Republicans focused elsewhere. Top Republican groups stayed out of the race, instead opting to invest in contests they saw as more winnable in a particularly challenging midterm year for the GOP.
“In politics, you learn very quickly that not everyone follows through on their promises,” Garrity told the crowd gathered for her election night watch party.
Caria Knight of Mount Airy changed her party affiliation from Democratic to Republican specifically because of Garrity. She was impressed by her military experience as a retired U.S. Army colonel, as well as her tenure as treasurer.
Knight recognized that Garrity’s chance of winning the governorship was “slim” but said she was happy to support her anyway because of her values.
Successes, challenges, and gridlock
Shapiro’s first term as governor was marked by several attention-grabbing successes, including reopening a collapsed portion of I-95 in 12 days that bolstered his administration’s “get stuff done” motto and his focus on speeding up government approvals for licenses and permits. During his first term, lawmakers also developed a new state tax credit for working families, created a new funding system for public education, and delivered a pension increase for retired teachers, police officers, and firefighters. He also has touted implementing the “strictest guardrails in the nation” for data centers in August — a major shift in stance after previously supporting the increasingly unpopular developments.
But his term was also marked by a number of challenges, particularly in navigating the split legislature. He struggled as a dealmaker after a 2023 misstep in state budget negotiations over a deal on a school voucher program led to tarnished relationships with top Senate Republicans.
Some voters on Tuesday said they still had not forgotten his backtrack on school choice.
“He ran last time on education and kids and having vouchers,” said Lisa Mallon, 62, a Republican committeewoman in Abington. “As soon as he got in office, he pulled back on it.”
Around the same time in 2023, a longtime top aide, former State Rep. Mike Vereb (R., Montgomery), abruptly resigned after he was accused of sexual harassment by a female staffer in the governor’s office, resulting in the state paying the accuser a $295,000 settlement. His resignation came just before news of the allegations were reported by The Inquirer, and Shapiro has repeatedly said he had no knowledge of the investigation into Vereb.
More recently, Shapiro has attempted to lead the state through its worst measles outbreak in more than three decades, which has seen the deaths of at least six Pennsylvania residents. The deaths led to a public clash between Shapiro and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, whose agencies have refused to classify three of the state’s six deaths as caused by measles.
Shapiro also grappled with an increasingly dangerous job as a public figure, causing him to consider whether he should continue in elected office moving forward. He has been outspoken against political violence for years, but in April 2025, that violence came to his front door: A Harrisburg man firebombed the state-owned governor’s residence on the first night of Passover while Shapiro and his family slept inside.
The man, Cody Balmer, whose family said he was having a mental health crisis, later told police he wanted to kill Shapiro because of his perceived support for the war in Gaza. (Shapiro has called for a two-state solution in the Mideast and has called for more U.S. aid to be sent to people living in Gaza.) Balmer later pleaded guilty to arson and attempted murder of Shapiro.
Shapiro on Tuesday recognized the sacrifices his wife, Lori, and their four children have made for his successful career in public service.
“You have all been through so much,” Shapiro said. “It’s been hard. Frankly, sometimes it’s been terrifying.”
Shapiro concluded his 20-minute remarks with a message to his supporters: ”I love this commonwealth, and I love you.” He walked off the stage to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”
While Democrats celebrated successes nationally, Shapiro’s success was pretty simple for voters like Jay Zide.
Zide, 61, of West Chester, said he believes Shapiro is a competent governor who “seems to work well with both sides,” and who would do a much better job in the White House than the current presidential administration.
“Shapiro is well-spoken,” he added, “and he seems like a nice fella, for being a politician.”
Staff writers Vinny Vella and Zoe Greenberg contributed to this article.
