Josh Shapiro Is A Top VP Contender. He’s Also Attracted More Controversy Than Any Other Candidate. (2024)

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has some obvious advantages as a potential running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris. He is a popular, moderate governor of a critical battleground state with strong ties to both law enforcement and organized labor.

In the two weeks since Shapiro emerged on Harris’ short list, however, he has also been subjected to a barrage of criticism — largely from more progressive detractors — and accompanying negative media coverage that would, at this point, make him more controversial with parts of the Democratic coalition than any of the other finalists for the No. 2 spot.

Initially, and perhaps most prominently, an ad-hoc group of individual left-wing activists and commentators has attacked Shapiro for being too pro-Israel — with one self-described Jewish leftist erecting a website titled NoGenocideJosh.com.

The proximate cause of these activists’ ire is Shapiro’s comment on CNN in April that elements of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses were engaging in antisemitism. Shapiro distinguished between different kinds of protesters and also warned against Islamophobia on campus, but one polarizing line — sometimes stripped of context — has raised progressive hackles.

“We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who are African-American in our communities,” he said.

Shapiro’s allies note he holds a mainstream Democratic position on Israel-Palestine: He supports Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, wants a two-state solution, and views Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace. In January, Shapiro called Netanyahu “one of the worst leaders of all time.”

Several pro-Israel Democrats have argued that singling out Shapiro, an observant Jew, is antisemitic.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, another Democratic vice-presidential finalist, has a similarly conventional pro-Israel record and relatively uncritical stance on Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, but he has not elicited an attack campaign from the left. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, two other Democratic contenders who have not attracted much progressive scrutiny, have likewise taken pro-Israel stances anathema to the left.

“Singling [Shapiro] out, or applying a double standard to him over the war in Gaza, is antisemitic and wrong,” Rep. Adam Schiff, who is Jewish and the Democratic Senate nominee in California, posted on X. “Don’t go there.”

In the Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg has even proposed that Shapiro’s pro-Israel credentials make him uniquely suited to defend Harris amid inevitable disputes with the Israeli government and “insulate the boss from charges of anti-Semitism.”

Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Getty Images

But in the course of Shapiro’s brief moment in the national spotlight, more information has emerged about his history of pro-Israel views. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Friday that Shapiro had penned an op-ed for his college newspaper in which he argued that peace between Israelis and Palestinians “will never come,” because Palestinians are “too battle-minded” to accept Israel. The end of the column describes Shapiro as having volunteered for the Israeli military.

Bulwark reporter Marc Caputo also reported that shortly after graduating college, Shapiro worked in the Israeli Embassy’s public affairs division for five months between stints as a legislative aide for Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Shapiro’s staff clarified Friday that he no longer holds the views he expressed in his college newspaper. And while he volunteered on an Israeli army base in high school as part of a program in which he also spent time on a kibbutz, or farm commune, he did not engage in any military activity, his staff added.

“Since he wrote this piece as a 20-year old student, Governor Shapiro has built close, meaningful, informative relationships with many Muslim-American, Arab-American, Palestinian Christian, and Jewish community leaders all across Pennsylvania,” Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said in a statement. “The Governor greatly values their perspectives and the experiences he has learned from over the years – and as a result, as with many issues, his views on the Middle East have evolved into the position he holds today.”

Shapiro has simultaneously endured broadsides from some public education advocates over his support for private school vouchers. The position indeed puts him to the right of most elected Democrats, who regard vouchers as a giveaway to private school parents that deprives the public school system of essential funding.

“I’m still voting for Kamala, of course, but I sure wish her running mate was someone other than Shapiro,” said Victoria Switzer, a retired public school teacher in Pennsylvania piqued by Shapiro’s voucher support.

Shapiro maintains that he only supports vouchers to lock in increased public school funding through compromise with pro-voucher Republicans in control of the state Senate. Failing to reach that kind of deal, he has nonetheless consistently increased public school funding, including through a bipartisan agreement this year to provide an additional $4.5 billion to the state’s schools over the next nine years.

“Despite being the only Governor in the nation with a divided legislature – and despite bad faith attacks from all sides – Josh Shapiro has been a champion for public education and delivered real results,” Bonder, Shapiro’s spokesperson, said.

Switzer, a resident of natural gas-heavy Dimock, Pennsylvania, has another gripe with Shapiro: a settlement he reached in 2023 with a fracking company that had contaminated her town’s water. At the time, she had hailed him as the “people’s lawyer” for getting the company to pay for a new water line from a different well, but shortly afterward, she felt deceived when it emerged that the deal also allowed for fracking to return to Dimock and for the gas company to take over local water inspections from the state.

Switzer is one of a handful of environmental activists in Pennsylvania who wrote to the Harris campaign calling for her not to pick Shapiro on the basis of his conduct in the Dimock case.

“Under Governor Shapiro’s leadership, the Office of Attorney General secured a historic settlement for Pennsylvanians living in Dimock – getting Coterra Energy to finally take responsibility for polluting residents’ water and commit to building a new $16 million public water line to provide clean, reliable drinking water for generations to come,” Bonder said.

“I’m still voting for Kamala, of course, but I sure wish her running mate was someone other than Shapiro.”

- Victoria Switzer, retired public school teacher

To some progressives though, the sheer volume of objections is reason enough to cast him aside.

Harris “has all of this good will, all of this energy, all this excitement,” said Rania Batrice, a Palestinian American progressive involved in climate advocacy. “If she chooses somebody with so much horrible baggage, it’s alienating to our base, many of whom felt alienated by [President Joe Biden] already.”

Indeed, what began as a trickle of criticism aimed at Shapiro has swelled to a flood. On Saturday, The New York Times reported that advocates for survivors of sexual assault fault Shapiro for not dismissing a top aide over sexual harassment allegations until six months after a complaint about the aide was first made.

Bonder told the Times that Shapiro was “not aware of the complaint or investigation until months after the complaint was filed.”

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who clashed with Shapiro while they served on the state’s board of pardons together, also communicated to the Harris campaign via his representatives that he is concerned Shapiro has an aversion to progressive sentencing reforms, Politico reported Saturday.

Shapiro’s allies have mustered a bit of a pushback campaign to highlight more positive stories about the governor. Veterans of former President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign spoke to The New York Times about how Shapiro’s endorsem*nt of Obama in 2008 — at a time when Democratic elected officials in the state were split between him and Hillary Clinton — kicked off a warm, lasting relationship between the two men.

Mark Penn, a centrist Democratic consultant, characterized Shapiro in a New York Times column as the antidote to Harris’ “one overriding weakness”: That “she is perceived as being to the left of Joe Biden.”

Joe Scarborough, the co-host of MSNBC’s influential liberal morning show “Morning Joe,” focused on Shapiro’s strength in Pennsylvania.

“Josh Shapiro is governor of the most important state in this election. He is the most experienced leader and gifted orator of the remaining (strong) candidates,” Scarborough posted on X. “He would present voters with the most dynamic ticket since Clinton/Gore in 1992, and will be ready to serve on Day 1.”