How GOP's Garrity is trying to steer the governor race in Pennsylvania

• Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity has launched her Republican campaign for governor.
• She has criticized Gov. Josh Shapiro on issues like transgender athletes in sports and his perceived national ambitions.
• Garrity is now running for a higher office after previously criticizing other politicians for doing the same.

Stacy Garrity’s quest to become Pennsylvania’s 49th governor is under way, and the Republican state treasurer in her second term has made her campaign’s message clear: Down with Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Defeating the popular Democratic governor seeking his second term will take an all-hands-on-deck approach, Garrity told a friendly conservative crowd inside a Camp Hill hotel ballroom during the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference on April 10.

Garrity, who will turn 62 two days before the May 19 primary, bashed Shapiro, 52, first criticizing him for not “protecting the integrity of girls sports.”

“Boys don’t belong in girls’ sports,” Garrity said. “Shapiro was chosen to appease the activist left instead of protecting the integrity of girls’ sports.”

Proposed legislation to ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports cleared the GOP-controlled Senate in 2024. It was re-referred to a House committee in March 2026.

The legislation viewed by opponents as anti-trans underscores political sensitivity around an issue Shapiro has argued is an effort to restrict individual freedoms and is supported by “extremist politicians.” Shapiro, however, stopped short of committing to veto the bill, called the Save Women’s Sports Act, according to a 2025 article by WITF.

There are not many transgender student-athletes. NCAA President Charlie Baker testified in December 2024 that out of 500,000 total college athletes, he believes fewer than 10 transgender athletes competed that year. WITF reported in July that Shapiro said in the past five years, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association handled three athletes’ eligibility out of about 350,000 students. The question was about their gender identity. 

Garrity, a former U.S. Army Reserve officer, said she plans to fight for Pennsylvania families while her likely opponent in the November general election is focused on fighting President Donald Trump. “He’s using your tax dollars to do it,” Garrity said of the lawsuits Shapiro’s administration has filed against the Trump administration.

Garrity uttered Shapiro’s name 16 times in her 25-minute speech to the conservative crowd that included people from groups like Heritage Foundation, Moms for Liberty, Pennsylvania Family Institute, Commonwealth Foundation and Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry.

She said his policies are failures and called him a problem, mediocre and thin-skinned.

Garrity plans to tap the state’s energy resources, which she said will fuel the nation, lower utility bills and help secure America’s energy future. She promised property tax relief, better performing schools and to make Pennsylvania the hub of global commerce “so students stay in Pennsylvania, build homes in Pennsylvania and start a business in Pennsylvania."

The likely Republican nominee for governor delivered ironic remarks when the elected row officer running for higher office promised she will never promote her political ambitions.

“The governor is more interested in Pennsylvania Avenue than helping Pennsylvania families,” Garrity said, referring to the street where the White House is located.

Shapiro is thought to be priming a 2028 run for president. He represented Montgomery County in the state House from 2005-2012, served as Montgomery County commissioner from 2012-2017 and, before becoming governor in 2023, was the state’s attorney general from 2017-2023. In his 2020 re-election bid for AG, Shapiro got more votes in Pennsylvania than President Joe Biden. He was on Kamala Harris' shortlist of potential vice president candidates for the 2024 race.

Garrity's campaign spokesman, Matt Beynon, criticized Shapiro for traveling to Democratic donor events, covering up sexual harassment claims within his administration and using taxpayer money to attend the Super Bowl.

"Stacy Garrity has committed her life to service in uniform where she was awarded two Bronze Stars and the Legion of Merit for her time in Iraq and now, as Pennsylvania’s treasurer, she has saved taxpayers billions," Beynon wrote in an email to USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania. "Josh Shapiro has spent the past 20 years practicing his Barack Obama impersonation in front of a mirror, and nothing will get in his way of performing it on the national stage. So no, Stacy Garrity and Josh Shapiro are not the same."

During her speech at the conference, Garrity touted her military experience ― she deployed three times in the Gulf and Iraq Wars ― and her corporate background. The Bradford County native rose to vice president of Global Tungsten & Powders, a manufacturing company based in Towanda.

“When (Shapiro) was hopping from political office to political office, I was just one of two female vice presidents for a global manufacturing company, helping bring real jobs to my community," Garrity said. "Josh Shapiro has overlooked communities. It feels like he’s been running for the next office from Day One.”

The playbook is not new. Garrity attacked her previous opponent’s political ambitions in her first bid for treasurer. She argued then-incumbent Joe Torsella would use a second term to seek another office, according to reporting from WESA in Pittsburgh.

She is now doing exactly that, and, if she were to defeat Shapiro, would be breaking a 2020 promise she made to serve a full, four-year second term, according to reporting by PennLive. In that article, she is also quoted criticizing “these row officers that want to run for something else.”

In Shapiro’s first bid for governor, he defeated GOP state Sen. Doug Mastriano by around 15 percentage points. Garrity became the front-runner for her party’s nomination after Mastriano announced he would not run for governor a second time.

Garrity has been endorsed by Trump and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.

Mark Walters is the USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania statehouse reporter. Reach him at[email protected].