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HARRISBURG — In Pennsylvania, the next big election never feels far away.
After a 2024 presidential race in which Republicans dominated statewide contests and Democrats held on by a hair in the state House, political insiders’ attention is already turning to the 2026 gubernatorial race.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat believed to have presidential ambitions, won easily in 2022 against a weak GOP candidate. He has strong approval ratings, fundraises well and is considered a tough politician to beat.
After Republicans’ dominant showings statewide in 2024, GOP operatives told Spotlight PA that they believe the party has a lot of good candidates to choose from.
“I don’t think they’ve done it ever, swept all three [row offices],” said Charlie Gerow, a longtime Republican political consultant, referring to the elected offices of attorney general, auditor general and treasurer.
Attorney general has been an elected position only since 1980, and in that period, this is the first time all three offices have been held by Republicans.
“That, in and of itself, is historic and significant, and it is further proof of the fact that Republicans have a very deep bench that actually deepened and widened last election,” Gerow said.
One candidate stands out: Treasurer Stacy Garrity won her reelection race by the largest margin of any 2024 statewide candidate in Pennsylvania, and as Gerow noted, she’s clearly interested in higher office.
“She’s been ubiquitous,” he said. “She’s been at every political wake and wedding for the last number of years, and that has a cumulative effect, as you saw in the election.”
Gerow added that he thinks there are many capable potential candidates in the GOP, including incoming Attorney General Dave Sunday and Auditor General Tim DeFoor; congressional representatives like Guy Reschenthaler and Dan Meuser; and state lawmakers like Sen. Scott Martin of Lancaster.
In November, Garrity beat Democrats’ least well-funded row office candidate, Erin McClelland, a political outsider who won her primary in an upset and did not receive an endorsement from Shapiro. The matchup likely advantaged Garrity — but GOP operatives say that doesn’t take away from her strength as a candidate.
Liz Havey, secretary for the Pennsylvania Republican Party, says Garrity is a clear option for higher office.
“I think that if Stacy wants to run for another office, no matter what it is, she’ll be a very serious contender,” Havey said. “She’s earned the respect of not only donors but definitely voters and the volunteers who are on the ground.”
Like Gerow, Havey thinks the GOP has a deep bench in Pennsylvania. But she particularly admired the support base Garrity built this election. Seizing on McClellend’s minimal support from institutional Democrats, Garrity scooped up endorsements from groups that don’t typically back a Republican, like building trades unions — forming what Havey called “a nontraditional coalition of support.”
The treasurer is responsible for paying state bills for things like contracts and workers, managing a big chunk of state savings, sitting on the boards of Pennsylvania’s two public pension funds and administering a range of savings programs.
But Garrity has also weighed in on a range of policy and political issues not necessarily relevant to her office, primarily aligning herself with the Trump wing of her party.
Shortly after her 2020 election but before she took office, she appeared at a rally that sought to cast doubt on the year’s results, saying that, “The election from this November is tarnished forever.” That rally happened the day before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I would love to say it affected her, in the sense that I’m one of those Republicans who doesn’t believe the election was stolen, and actually, our firm won’t work with candidates who do,” said Sam Chen, a GOP political consultant based in the Lehigh Valley.
“But that said, we’re the minority of the party now,” he added. “I don’t know that it hurts Garrity.”
During her most recent campaign, Garrity responded to attacks from a Democratic challenger about her 2020 election comments, telling Spotlight PA that her goal was “to state that the election process had been tarnished by unelected bureaucrats who ignored the election law as written.”
Chen thinks Garrity has been more successful than other Trump-aligned GOP candidates — like state Sen. Doug Mastriano of Franklin County, whom Shapiro crushed in the 2022 race for governor — because “she hasn’t tried to replicate Trump.”
While she cast doubt on the 2020 election, it’s not one of the main things she talks about. And she tends not to be “bombastic,” Chen said.
Garrity still took contentious stances throughout her first term. She celebrated the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and increased investments in Israel after last year’s Hamas attacks, for instance.
But her campaign ads didn’t focus on these things, Chen said. Much of her reelection bid centered on issues like returning unclaimed property and increasing her office’s transparency.
“She has managed to kind of pull all Republican groups together,” Chen said. “Trump supporters like her and never-Trump people like her. She’s been able to really manage that in the way that I think other Republican candidates haven’t been as successful doing.”
In a statement, Garrity told Spotlight PA that she was “honored to receive more votes than any state candidate in history” in her reelection this year, and that she is “completely focused on my job as Treasurer to make Pennsylvania a better place to live, work and raise a family.”
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