A Democratic sweep of Pennsylvania’s competitive U.S. House and state legislative races could boost the case for Shapiro in his party’s presidential primary.
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BETHLEHEM, Pa. — It was not by happenstance that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) chose a union hall here in the Lehigh Valley to launch the final 100-day sprint toward the midterm election. “This is ground zero for the battle to control Congress,” the speaker-in-waiting declared.
The same could be said for the centrality of this state — and this election — to the presidential aspirations of a Democrat who shared the stage Sunday with Jeffries: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Were the popular governor to run nationally in 2028, and the current assumption is he will, what happens in his crucial state in November could be a compelling argument not only for his electability but for his ability to carry others over the finish line.
This year, Pennsylvania holds four of the House races that Democrats consider to be among their top opportunities for flipping Republican-held seats. That’s more competitive races than in any other state, according to the House Democrats’ campaign operation.
President Donald Trump carried three of those districts in 2024. But in the 2022 gubernatorial election, Shapiro, then the state’s attorney general, won all four by double digits against a far-right opponent.
“Pennsylvania is always the ultimate swing state, the state that kind of decides it all,” Shapiro, who is running for a second term, said in an interview. “And so it is not a stretch to imagine if we win these races here, that’ll create a Democratic majority in the U.S. House.”
Shapiro is a heavy favorite against the Republican gubernatorial nominee, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity. He has raised more than $50 million to run up the score, and create an updraft that could help candidates lower on the ballot.
He has also had a hand in who those candidates are. Shapiro endorsed the Democratic candidates in all four of Pennsylvania’s most hotly contested congressional districts in their primaries. One of them, Bob Brooks, spent 20 years as a firefighter in Bethlehem and was Shapiro’s pick in a hard-fought primary to take on Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie. In 2024, Mackenzie best Democratic Rep. Susan Wild by 1 percentage point.
As he prepared to introduce Shapiro here on Sunday, Brooks emphasized his background as an outsider who can relate to the pressures that ordinary people are under: “I have to be honest. Running for Congress was not on my Bingo card. I’m not a politician. Far from it, actually. I’m a regular working person, like so many of the faces that I see in this room.”
Meanwhile, Keystone State Democrats are also hoping to flip the state senate, where Republicans have a 27-23 majority, while also maintaining their narrow hold on the House. If they can do it, they would be looking at their first unified hold on state government in more than three decades.
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Shapiro has pledged he would use that power to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, from its current $7.25; fund mass transit; build more housing and codify abortion rights into state law.
All of which could be rolled into a national message, the outlines of which became apparent as the governor talked about his agenda. “We all need to do our part to stop the chaos and cruelty and corruption of Donald Trump,” he said, “and that’s going to require us here at the state level having a trifecta so that we can pass policies that help the people of Pennsylvania while Trump is hurting them.”
Having seen his state vote twice for Trump, in 2016 and 2024, Shapiro is working to build up the Democratic infrastructure. He recently unveiled a multimillion-dollar effort that party officials say is the largest coordinated midterm operation in the state’s history. It boasts having opened 27 offices across the state and hiring nearly 100 full-time organizers.
The governor has also addressed one of the more worrisome trends for Pennsylvania Democrats: Their voter registration advantage over Republicans had dropped precipitously over recent election cycles.
Between 2020 and 2024, the registration gap between the two parties had fallen by more than half, to 325,000 Democrats from 686,000 Republicans. It was a warning sign that Trump was going to win the state and its 19 electoral votes.
This year, with the midterms approaching, the numbers are starting to turn around; Democrats have added nearly 25,500 to the registration rolls, while Republican numbers have dropped by more than 4,500, according to voter registration data analyzed by PennLive.com.
Retooling and professionalizing the party is a project that Shapiro began almost a year ago, he said, and now, “I’m investing millions of dollars in helping elevate other Democrats on the ballot, spending my time campaigning for people like Bob Brooks and others.”
If all of this works as he hopes, it might be the foundation for a presidential campaign. Unknowable at this point, however, is whether the Democratic base in 2028 will be looking for a Mr. Fix-It whose appeal stretches across party lines, or will move further leftward in its fury at the establishment.
Shapiro insists — as presidential candidates nearly always do at this stage of the game — that none of this is his concern at the moment.
“What I’m focused on are these midterms,” which in Pennsylvania “will be decided on a razor’s edge,“ Shapiro said. “Folks are fed up and angry and frustrated. The best way to demonstrate that, the best way to show that we’re against what Trump is doing, is to show up and vote in record numbers.”
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