Governor Shapiro and Lt. Governor Davis are fighting to flip Pennsylvania’s four critical Congressional seats and send strong Democratic leaders to Washington this November

PENNSYLVANIA – Yesterday, following Pennsylvania’s primary elections, Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis spoke with Tavis Smiley on his national radio program about the stakes of the midterm elections. 

Lt. Governor Davis made clear that he is ready to help elect strong Democratic candidates who will put a check on Donald Trump’s reckless, cost-raising agenda that’s hurting Pennsylvania families. With the general election now in full swing, Lt. Governor Davis and Governor Josh Shapiro are ready to fight to flip Pennsylvania’s four key U.S. House seats and send leaders to Congress who will put the rights and interests of Pennsylvanians first.

Despite the chaos, cruelty, and corruption coming out of Washington, Lt. Governor Davis pointed to how the Shapiro-Davis Administration provides a stark contrast — emphasizing ongoing efforts to lower costs and create ladders of opportunities so that Pennsylvanians can not just get by but get ahead here in the Commonwealth. 

See below for key excerpts from Lt. Governor Davis’ conversation, and listen to the full interview here.

Question: What gives you reason to believe that in Pennsylvania you could flip literally four seats?

Austin Davis: We have current sitting members of Congress who have, quite frankly, sold out Pennsylvania. They’ve gone to Washington, DC, and voted with Donald Trump, lock, stop, and barrel. And what that has meant to everyday Pennsylvanians is when the President and Republicans in Congress passed their One Beautiful Bill, as they like to call it, they put 25 rural hospitals at risk of closing here in Pennsylvania. We have seen hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians kicked off of their health insurance coverage because of that, and so Pennsylvanians are hurting, they’re seeing their costs continuously rise as a result of the chaos and confusion and the agenda that’s coming out of the Trump Administration, and there are four members of Congress who have been with them with the President every step of the way, and we believe Pennsylvanians are ready for new leadership. We have four terrific candidates running: Janelle Stelson, who is running in central Pennsylvania, Paige Cognetti, running in northeastern Pennsylvania, Bob Brooks running in the Lehigh Valley, and Bob Harvie running in southeastern Pennsylvania, right outside of Philadelphia. All of them are excellent candidates who have real lived experience as working-class people and in their communities, and I think they’re ultimately going to be victorious at the end of the day, because I think Pennsylvanians want representatives in Washington. We’re going to go there, fight for them and their families, and I know Governor Shapiro and I want strong partners in DC who are going to help us deliver for Pennsylvania.

Question: Everybody wants to talk about the middle class, nobody wants to say the word poverty, or talk about the poor, the working poor in this country. […] And so now the word is just affordability, when it really, the goal really ought to be more than just affordability. To my mind, it ought to be about upward mobility, but that’s just me.

Austin Davis: I think you’re 100% right on that, and I think we as government leaders, we have to do a number of things. We have to make sure we’re bringing down costs, and whether that’s grocery bills, utility bills, just so people can afford to live, we also have to invest in public education, which Governor Shapiro and I have done, made historic investments in public education, so young people, regardless of your zip code, have every opportunity to succeed. We also have to create multiple pathways to success. If a young person wants to go to college, we want to make sure that’s affordable for them, but if they want to go into an apprenticeship program and join a union, we want to make sure they have a pathway to do that, and if they want to start a small business and pursue entrepreneurship, we want to make sure that they can do that as well. We have to do all of those things to help make sure every person has the economic freedom to live the American dream, and that means growing our economy, doing the investments in early education and career pathways, and building out our workforce, because we can’t afford to lose anybody. Everybody in this country should have the right to live the American dream, and the opportunity, and we should be giving them the tools to do that. And that’s why I’ve stayed in this fight with Governor Shapiro, and I’m running for reelection, because not only am I trying to build the world that I’m living in, I’m a dad now. I have a two year old daughter named Harper, and I’m building the world that my daughter’s gonna live in, and I want to make sure that she has every opportunity to succeed, and I leave her a Pennsylvania that is brighter, fairer, more just than the one that I inherited. That’s what I want for all Pennsylvania children, not just my daughter.

Question: What does this governor’s race, Shapiro and Garrity, what does this governors race look like? What’s it going to look like in Pennsylvania?

Austin Davis: The contrast could not be clearer between Governor Shapiro and Treasurer Garrity. Governor Shapiro is running on a record of making historic investments in our public education system, passing universal free breakfast to every child in Pennsylvania to make sure they have access to food, to bringing our violent crime and gun violence rates down to the historic lows that we’ve seen in 25 years by approaching this issue from a comprehensive perspective versus Treasurer Garrity, who has literally done everything she can to suck up to Donald Trump and literally will adopt his agenda here in Pennsylvania, and I don’t think Pennsylvanians want the chaos and confusion that they see coming out of Washington, DC every day to come to our state capitol in Harrisburg, and to even further disrupt their daily lives. So, I think it’s going to be a race around who’s better positioned to move Pennsylvania forward, and I think at the end of the day, there’s going to be a resounding victory for Governor Shapiro, and I to continue the work we’ve been doing. 

###