Josh Shapiro
Joshua David Shapiro is an American politician and lawyer serving since 2023 as the 48th governor of Pennsylvania. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the attorney general of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2023 and served on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners from 2012 to 2017.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Shapiro was raised in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He studied political science at the University of Rochester and earned his Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University. After that, he worked as a senior adviser to U.S. senator Robert Torricelli. Shapiro was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2004, defeating former Republican U.S. representative Jon D. Fox. He represented the 153rd district from 2005 to 2012. Shapiro was elected to the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 2011, marking the first time Republicans lost control of Montgomery County. Serving on the board from 2011 to 2017, he held the position of chairman, and in 2015, was also appointed chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency by Governor Tom Wolf.
Shapiro was elected Pennsylvania attorney general in 2016, defeating Republican John Rafferty Jr., and was reelected in 2020. As attorney general, he released the findings of a statewide grand jury report that revealed the abuse of children by Catholic priests and coverup by church leaders, and helped negotiate $1 billion for Pennsylvania as part of a national opioid settlement. In the 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, Shapiro ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and defeated Republican nominee Doug Mastriano in the general election by a landslide.
On April 13, 2025, Shapiro and his family survived an arson attack at the governor's mansion, hours after holding a Passover Seder.
Early life and education
Joshua David Shapiro was born on June 20, 1973, in Kansas City, Missouri. He spent a few years of his childhood on a United States Navy base where his father, Steven Shapiro, served as a medical officer, before the family moved to Dresher, Pennsylvania, a community in Upper Dublin Township in Montgomery County. His father Steven works as a pediatrician in East Norriton, Pennsylvania, and his mother, Judi, was a teacher.Shapiro was raised in a Jewish household. At age 6, through his synagogue, the Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, and the Forman Hebrew Day School, he began writing letters to Avi Goldstein, a Soviet Jewish refusenik in Tbilisi, Soviet Georgia, and enlisted others in an international pen pal program he called Children for Avi. He attended high school at Akiba Hebrew Academy in Merion Station, Pennsylvania. He was a basketball team captain during his senior year. During high school, Shapiro spent five months studying and volunteering in Israel with his classmates, as part of a "service project" requirement, which they completed through "a program that took them to a kibbutz in Israel where he worked on a farm and at a fishery". The program also included service on an Israel Defense Forces base, an experience he described as being "a past volunteer in the Israeli army". According to his spokesperson in 2024, Shapiro was "at no time engaged in any military activities".
Shapiro attended the University of Rochester, majoring in political science. In 1992, he was the first freshman ever elected student body president of the university. He graduated magna cum laude in 1995. While at Rochester, in 1993 Shapiro published an op-ed in the Campus Times student newspaper titled "Peace not Possible", in which he claimed that peace "will never come" to the Middle East. The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted it as follows: "Palestinians will not coexist peacefully. They do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States. They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own." He also wrote that he believed then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was in danger of being assassinated by "his fellow belligerent Arabs". In 2024, a spokesperson for Shapiro said that Shapiro's position had changed since he wrote the op-ed and that he now supports a two-state solution.
While working on Capitol Hill, Shapiro enrolled at the Georgetown Law Center as an evening student and earned his Juris Doctor in 2002.
Early career
Capitol Hill
After graduating from college, Shapiro moved to Washington, D.C., where he spent six months working in the Israeli embassy's public diplomacy department beginning in April 1996. According to a Shapiro spokesperson, he worked there "to get foreign policy experience. His job largely involved educating the public about Israel." In September 1996, he began working for U.S. representative Peter Deutsch. He also worked as legislative assistant to U.S. senator Carl Levin and as a senior advisor to U.S. senator Robert Torricelli. While working for Torricelli, Shapiro planned foreign affairs tours in the Middle East and Asia, including a trip to North Korea. From 1999 to 2003, Shapiro worked as chief of staff to U.S. representative Joe Hoeffel, who represented parts of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.Pennsylvania House of Representatives
In 2004, Shapiro ran for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the 153rd district. He faced the Republican nominee, former congressman Jon D. Fox. Shapiro trailed in polling at the beginning of the race, but he knocked on 10,000 doors and ran a campaign centered on increasing education funding and better access to health care. He was elected by a margin of ten percentage points over Fox. Shapiro was reelected in 2006, 2008, and 2010.As a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he built a reputation as a consensus builder who was willing to work across the aisle on a bipartisan basis. Following the 2006 elections, Democrats controlled the Pennsylvania State House by one seat, but the party was unable to unite behind a candidate for Speaker of the House. Shapiro helped broker a deal that resulted in the election of moderate Republican Dennis O'Brien as Speaker of the House. O'Brien subsequently named Shapiro as deputy speaker of the house. In 2008, following revelations that Democratic House minority leader Bill DeWeese was involved in a corruption scandal, Shapiro called for him to step down, citing him as a "symbol of a broken system" and arguing that DeWeese remaining in leadership would hurt Democrats statewide in the 2008 elections.
In 2007 and 2009, Shapiro introduced three separate bills into the House to divest state funds from Iran and later Sudan. The "bill and similar efforts around the country make a moral argument against investing in countries with a history of terror or genocide." "The idea of pulling out of companies that do business with Iran is based on earlier such efforts that crippled the apartheid South African government. But thus far, the South African campaign has not been replicated." In 2010, Shapiro, U.S. senator Bob Casey, and state representative Dan Frankel pushed for national legislation to allow states' pension funds to divest from business engaging with Iran.
While a state representative, Shapiro was one of the first public backers of then-Senator Barack Obama for president in 2008. This was in contrast with much of the Pennsylvania Democratic political establishment, which supported Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary.
From 2006 through 2017, Shapiro also practiced corporate law at the firm Stradley, Ronon, Stevens, and Young in Philadelphia.
Montgomery County commissioner
Shapiro won election to the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 2011. The election marked the first time in history that the Republican Party lost control of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. Shapiro chaired the board from 2012 to 2016.Shapiro's commission duties centered on social services and administration. Castor, the only Republican member of the board during Shapiro's tenure, praised Shapiro's work, calling him "the best county commissioner I ever knew" and "very good at arriving at consensus." In 2016, Shapiro voted for an 11% tax increase, which was an average increase of $66 in property taxes. During his tenure, the board of commissioners implemented zero-based budgeting and shifted county pension investments from hedge funds to index funds. Democrats retained a majority on the board of commissioners in the 2015 election, as Shapiro and his running mate, Val Arkoosh, both won election.
In April 2015, Governor Tom Wolf named Shapiro the chair of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
Campaigns for Pennsylvania Attorney General
Shapiro announced his candidacy for Pennsylvania attorney general in January 2016. While he had practiced with Philadelphia's Stradley Ronon firm and chaired the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, he had never served as a prosecutor. Shapiro campaigned on his promise to restore the office's integrity following Kathleen Kane's resignation and also promised to work to combat the opioid epidemic and gun violence.His campaign was supported by President Barack Obama, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and businessman and former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg, who was among the largest donors to Shapiro's campaign. He won the Democratic primary for attorney general in April 2016, defeating Stephen Zappala and John Morganelli with 47 percent of the vote. In November 2016, Shapiro narrowly defeated the Republican nominee, state senator John Rafferty Jr., with 51.3 percent of the vote.
Shapiro was reelected in 2020, defeating Republican nominee Heather Heidelbaugh with 50.9% of the vote. He received 3,461,472 votes, the most of any candidate in Pennsylvania history, and outran Joe Biden in the concurrent presidential election.