POCONO RACEWAY, Pennsylvania — High up in the starting stand of a famed race track, Josh Shapiro waves a black-and-white checkered flag with an unmistakeable meaning: It’s over.
The metaphor isn’t entirely accurate.
“We may have a lead, but you’re coming down this home stretch. People are nipping at your heels,” the Pennsylvania governor told POLITICO. “You’ve got to run hard.”
Shapiro, the potential 2028 contender and 2024 veepstakes short-lister, does have reasons to be optimistic — and careful.
He’s threatening a double-digit blowout over Stacy Garrity, a candidate backed by President Donald Trump, in the most important swing state in the nation.
He’s also putting his coattails to the test.
None of the other potential 2028 Democratic candidates has more at stake in their own backyard on Tuesday than Shapiro. He doesn’t have California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s map-breaking Proposition 50, designed to beat back the GOP redistricting, nor his platinum email list. He doesn’t have Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s billions or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s deep bench of donors or former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s large map or the red-state credentials of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Shapiro is on the brink of flipping four hotly contested congressional seats — and guaranteeing Democrats the House. Pennsylvania Democrats could also take control of the state Senate, including some heavily gerrymandered seats, giving the party a governing trifecta for the first time since 1992.
“I’m not thinking about this as a victory for me,” he told POLITICO during a swing through the state. “I’m thinking about this as a victory for our country.”
All of which paves the way for him to pass a $15 minimum wage and a raft of other measures that could buttress a 2028 presidential bid.
Shapiro is very much following the Ron DeSantis theory of a presidential primary campaign: demonstrate dominance at home before branching out nationally — a strategy, it should be noted, that didn’t pay off for the Florida governor.
“I think what really hurt DeSantis was that he decided he wasn’t going to announce until after his legislative session, and that was May,” political strategist David Axelrod said. “Time is at a premium. If that’s his plan, that would be a miscalculation.”
Will we see him venture beyond Pennsylvania’s boundaries before the end of the year?
“I don’t know what my plans are,” Shapiro said.
The day had the feeling of both an ending of one campaign and the beginning of another. Even as he urged a midday audience of about 100 people to vote for Paige Cognetti, the Scranton mayor running against Rep. Rob Bresnahan, and Brian Wrightson, the state Senate candidate challenging Sen. Rosemary Brown, he is nationalizing his rhetoric.
“Don’t let Trump take away your hopefulness,” he told people gathered at East Stroudsburg University. “Don’t let him make you feel pessimistic. Don’t let him feel like change can’t come or that we have to look in the rearview mirror for answers. The answers are always straight ahead.”
Then there’s his set piece about the “American dream slipping away.”
He’s broadening out his message beyond the commonwealth.
“I think the work I do here in Pennsylvania, the confidence I give them about their government here can hopefully restore some of their faith in democracy, and I want in our democracy, and I want them to feel like they’ve got power to be able to shape the future of that American dream,” Shapiro told us.
A few hours later, Shapiro materializes inside Salerno’s, a tavern in Old Forge known for its American cheese-topped pizza. He sets a room in which patrons already have had a few too many Rolling Rocks and pumpkin martinis.
On the televisions, his own ad for Wrightson is playing on TV. He grips and grins and backslaps his way through the room.
At the end of the bar, he picks up five pizzas for the road, ducks out the door and boards his bus for another Cognetti rally.
Shapiro’s gubernatorial reelect isn’t drawing the buzz of some of the more razor’s-edge, online Senate races in the waning days of election season. But his project is no less remarkable.
“If we can win enough seats here in Pennsylvania to change the balance of power in Washington and be a check on Donald Trump, then we can both hold the president accountable and get stuff done in Washington,” Shapiro says. “Likewise, here in Pennsylvania, if we can win a trifecta for the first time since Bill Clinton’s election, I can raise wages almost immediately for tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who are at or below minimum wage and raise wages for others. That’s a concrete thing that we can accomplish.”
At the raceway, he has just finished cutting a video racing around the Pocono Raceway’s Tricky Triangle when he flashes a grin.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says, inviting POLITICO to the starting stand above the storied three-turn NASCAR track in the Pocono foothills.
Up the stairs, the burnt-orange fall foliage dances on the Pennsylvania horizon. It’s a vantage point Shapiro, as a NASCAR fan, has taken in many times.
Despite the apt setting, he deflects when asked if he’s ready to announce the launch of his campaign.
“If this is a metaphor,” he says, “it’s for finishing the race strong.”
There is just one wrinkle: Before he brandished the black-and-white flag, he picked up a green one, waving it vigorously.
“I think you mis-saw that,” Shapiro said with a smile. “I was waving a checkered flag to finish the governor’s race.”
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