2024-08-07 08:25:02
This story has been updated to reflect that Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate.
HARRISBURG — As Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro emerged in recent weeks as one of the top contenders to be Kamala Harris’ vice presidential nominee, an intense vetting process unfurled both behind the scenes in Washington, D.C. and in public.
In the end, Harris didn’t pick Shapiro. But the veepstakes did unearth several new revelations about the governor — not all of them positive.
Much of the public attention has focused on Shapiro’s long political career — in particular, on his evolving position on Israel, his knowledge of a former top aide’s alleged misconduct, and his relationships with national figures.
A woman also newly accused the former aide of threatening her in 2018, for instance, while The Inquirer resurfaced a college opinion article in which Shapiro called Palestinians “battle-minded.”
The vice presidency comes with few official duties, and has been unfavorably compared to “a bucket of warm spit.” But it often serves as a springboard to a presidential run — eight VPs ran as their party’s nominee for the presidency between 1960 and 2020.
Though he rarely discusses his political endgame, supporters have often remarked that Shapiro’s ultimate goal is the White House.
Below, Spotlight PA runs down some of the biggest revelations that emerged from the veepstakes:
A new allegation against a former aide
Shapiro’s relationship with a longtime aide, Mike Vereb, was litigated in several national stories, and a few pieces of new information have emerged from the scrutiny.
Vereb, a former Republican state legislator from Montgomery County, served alongside Shapiro in the Pennsylvania House. When Shapiro was elected attorney general in 2016, he hired Vereb to be his director of government affairs. Shapiro tapped Vereb for a similar role after being elected governor in 2022, installing him as the governor’s primary liaison to the legislature.
However, soon after Shapiro took office, Vereb allegedly sexually harassed a deputy. She filed a written complaint detailing her experience in May 2023, and the governor’s office agreed to pay her $295,000 as part of a settlement signed in September of that year. Vereb resigned a few weeks later, just before stories ran detailing the allegations.
Local media, including Spotlight PA, reported on the incident at the time. In response to a recent New York Times article on the allegations, Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder issued a new statement, saying the governor “was not aware of the complaint or investigation until months after the complaint was filed.”
Bonder added that Shapiro should have been notified of the allegations sooner and told The Times that Shapiro has now “ordered that he be immediately informed of any such complaint against a senior staff or cabinet member.”
At least one new allegation against Vereb has surfaced during the vetting. Cathleen Palm, a founder of a child advocacy group, told ABC News that Vereb invoked Shapiro’s name while threatening her during a 2018 phone call.
Bonder told ABC News that Shapiro was “not made aware of the woman’s complaint at the time” and also condemned Vereb’s alleged behavior.
This history prompted one national nonprofit that seeks to prevent sexual harassment to issue a statement calling for Harris to consider the allegations during the vetting process.
“What we know of Gov. Shapiro’s actions indicate an alarming negligence and a pattern of endangering women that work for and with his office,” the National Women’s Defense League said Monday.
‘Too battle-minded’ for peace
Shapiro’s position on Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza was also closely scrutinized in the past two weeks, and the coverage revealed past stances that his spokesperson says differ from his current views.
The Inquirer reported on a column Shapiro wrote for his college newspaper in which he claimed peace will “never come” to the Middle East, expressed skepticism of a two-state solution, and said that Palestinians are “too battle-minded.”
Asked to address the old column at an unrelated news conference last week, Shapiro reiterated his current support for a two-state solution.
“I was 20,” Shapiro, 51, said. “I have said for years, years before Oct. 7, that I favor a two-state solution — Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully side by side, being able to determine their own futures and their own destiny.”
In the column, Shapiro also said he was “a past volunteer in the Israeli army.” In a statement, Bonder said that the service happened in high school, and that “at no time was he engaged in any military activities.”
“While he was in high school, Josh Shapiro was required to do a service project, which he and several classmates completed through a program that took them to a kibbutz in Israel where he worked on a farm and at a fishery,” Bonder said. “The program also included volunteering on service projects on an Israeli army base.”
Shapiro has also criticized Israel. As one op-ed in the Atlantic in support of the governor noted, Shapiro told reporters this January that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “one of the worst leaders of all time.”
Still, the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, as well as a coalition of anti-war and leftist groups, called for Shapiro to make amends by doing more than saying his views have changed.
“Governor Shapiro must not simply claim that his views have changed,” CAIR-Philadelphia Executive Director Ahmet Tekelioglu said. “He must explicitly apologize and then prove that he has changed by retracting his recent anti-Palestinian positions, pledging to protect the right of students, state employees and everyone else in Pennsylvania to protest the Gaza genocide, and calling for an end to U.S. support for the Israeli government’s war crimes.”
High-profile relationships
In the rush to assess vice presidential hopefuls, much has been made of the personal relationships — or lack thereof — that the contenders have with Harris.
She and Shapiro were both attorneys general, and The Hill reported that while their tenures didn’t overlap, they kept in touch with one another through the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
PennLive reported that Shapiro was ready to endorse Harris during her failed 2020 run for president after they met each other at a summit for “rising political leaders” sponsored by the Aspen Institute, a national nonprofit.
The New York Times also reported on Shapiro’s relationship with former President Barack Obama.
As a second-term state legislator from Montgomery County, Shapiro endorsed Obama in 2008 and was a dedicated supporter and surrogate in the commonwealth.
The support was in vain. Obama ended up losing the Pennsylvania primary. But The Times reported that the two have remained familiar since. Obama returned the favor when he endorsed Shapiro for attorney general in 2016.
Considerable ink has also been spilled on the observation that Shapiro’s rhetorical style is strikingly familiar to that of the former president. Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, called it a “really bad impression” of Obama.
Asked about the comment at an event, Shapiro brushed it off.
“Barack Obama was probably our most gifted orator of my time, so it’s kind of a weird insult,” he said.
Rising opposition
Some critiques of Shapiro have also been policy-based — and in particular, have focused on Shapiro’s support for private school vouchers, wherein public dollars are routed to private school tuition.
That support is a particularly sore point for public education advocates and teachers’ unions, but it hasn’t escaped notice in other labor sectors either.
Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, publicly expressed a preference for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear over Shapiro or U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. His skepticism of Shapiro, he told Face the Nation over the weekend, is because Shapiro supports vouchers.
“They want to pass vouchers so that the rich people can subsidize their kids’ education and in the working class, kids can get excluded,” Fain said.
Amid the veepstakes, many Pennsylvania union leaders issued a carefully worded letter backing Shapiro’s labor record and saying that “is it more crucial than ever that we elevate elected officials whose leadership can unite our democratic coalition.”
The Inquirer reported earlier this month that “top aides” to Shapiro had called state unions to ask them to sign that letter.
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