Click here to watch the full interview

PENNSYLVANIA – After securing the Democratic nomination for reelection last week, Governor Josh Shapiro sat down with Politico’s Jonathan Martin at Angelo’s Pizzeria in South Philadelphia for a conversation on the stakes of the 2026 midterm elections and Pennsylvania’s pivotal role in the fight to win a Democratic majority in Congress. Throughout the conversation, the Governor discussed everything from Pennsylvania’s opportunity to flip four key Congressional seats and winning in rural, urban, and suburban communities, to the work of getting stuff done and restoring trust in government.

Governor Shapiro has made it clear that these midterms will be a referendum on the chaos, cruelty, and corruption of Donald Trump and his allies and an opportunity to elect strong Democratic leaders who will deliver for Pennsylvania families.

See below for key excerpts from Governor Shapiro On The Road with Jonathan Martin, and watch the full interview here.

On the Chaos, Cruelty, and Corruption of Donald Trump and His Enablers:

“The people that enabled this behavior, which so far has been a Congress that looked the other way, and a whole bunch of politicians who seemingly take an oath to uphold what he wants, as opposed to uphold their responsibilities under our Constitution. I think it is profoundly and pathetically weak the way these people just fall in line and do what he says. We’ve got a corrupt president, and then we’ve got a group of people that enable that corruption, and that’s why we need a change in Congress.”

On the Future of the Democratic Party:

“I think we are now poised as a party to have what we haven’t really had for the last thirty years, and that is a big ideological debate, and a debate not about left and right, as we were talking about before, but about what are we for? What do we stand for? What are we about? And I think that is a healthy thing. I think we need to do that, and I think if we do that successfully, that will lead to us being a majority party for years to come. On the other side, you’ve got Republicans who declare their loyalty to Donald Trump, who drives them right off a cliff. And I think that, you know, he will not have staying power after he is done. The party that he has built into a reflection of him, I don’t think they’re particularly well poised to be able to win elections for years.”

“I think what we need to do is look forward. I think what we need to do is have an affirmative agenda that’s different. That isn’t just simply predicated upon a reaction to Donald Trump, that’s what I think we need to do, and that’s what I do every day in Pennsylvania.”

On Delivering for and Winning Support in Rural Communities:

“I show up, I treat people with respect, I listen to what their needs are, and I deliver. […] I spend a bunch of time on farms. Listen to farmers, and they’ll tell you we need better technology in order to have better yields on our crops, to have better success with the marketplace for what we’re growing here. And so I listened, went back to the Capitol, brought Democrats and Republicans together and became the first state in the nation to create this ag innovation fund, where we’re now investing millions of dollars on our farmlands for technology, which is helping our farmers do better. Notwithstanding the headwinds they’re facing because of Trump’s policies, which are screwing them over with the tariffs. But that’s an example of showing up, treating people with respect, listening, and then delivering for them.”

“These are folks who know me. I show up on their farms, I listen to them, I invest the time to get to know them. And I would say more broadly, as a party, we stopped doing that maybe a decade or so ago. We stopped showing up, and we started deciding that just because you live in a county that voted a certain way, that they were not going to be able to find common ground on these other issues. I have learned so much by showing up in these areas.”

On Winning in Key Congressional Districts Across Pennsylvania:

“We went four for four. I chose four candidates in what are going to be the toughest races in our state. Arguably the four races are going to decide control of the U.S. House of Representatives. All four candidates I backed got through, and Bob Brooks had a particularly contested primary. […] I’ve got incredible respect for firefighters, and not only as a governor that I’ve fought for them, but I’ve seen it personally, my family and I, the incredible things they do, and Bob is a wonderful guy. He’ll be a great voice in Congress.”

“I was just with Paige Cognetti earlier today. She’s a great Mayor of Scranton. She’s running against this guy, Rob Bresnahan, the new congressman up there. The guy votes for everything Donald Trump wants him to. He literally voted to knock 25,000 people off of Medicaid in his district. He voted to knock 15,000 people off of SNAP. He voted to take away the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which has resulted in nearly 200,000 Pennsylvanians losing their healthcare rate. This guy literally voted that way because Trump told him to, so they can give a tax break to the people at the very top. That’s weak!”

“All four of these races are tough. We’re going to lean in, do everything we can to do our part to try and stop the chaos, the cruelty, the corruption in D.C. by having a check on this president in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

On Rising Antisemitism in America:

“Part of what I struggle with on this is that, on the one hand, I have this great privilege of serving the good people of Pennsylvania as their governor, traveling all across this state, listening to people where they are, as I had today. And I’m someone who is very open about my faith, very open about what calls me to serve. […] And what I’m greeted by, by the way even by people who disagree with my politics, is respect and tolerance for being open about my faith. And in many ways it invites them to share more about their own faith, and to share more about their own customs and their tradition. It is a beautiful thing that I experience everyday.”

“On the other hand, while I see this sort of tolerance in the people I interact with everyday, by the way, people who have elected me every time I’ve been on the ballot. People who continue to hold me in good standing, as you pointed out earlier, about where we are in Pennsylvania. You can’t deny the fact that there has been a dramatic spike in antisemitism across this country.”

“When you allow one group to be scapegoated or targeted, you’re making every other group ultimately less safe, and that has been true since the time William Penn set forth on the banks of the Delaware River, just a few blocks from here, when he tried to build a place that would be welcoming to people of all faiths. It is still true today. We’ve got to build a nation that is more welcoming to people of all faiths, otherwise everyone is less safe, and everyone is less free.”

On Rebuilding I-95 and the Strength of Union Labor:

“I think it showed our grit, our determination, and the fact that we would cut through red tape and cut through any obstacle to get stuff done. And I will also tell you, it showed the strength of union labor. I had a bunch of people reach out to me that day after the bridge collapsed — politicians, business folks, whatever — and a number of them warned me that you’ve got to go with non-union labor if you want to move quick on this. You’ve got to go with non-union labor if you want to get it done. My first call was to Ryan Boyer, the head of the Philadelphia Building Trades, and said, ‘Can you work 24/7? Can you marshal in an army to come do this? And I believe that if I can block and tackle for you, get rid of the red tape, get you all the materials you need, get you anything you need to be able to move quickly, I think we can get this done in record time.’ And we did on the strength of union labor, and on my belief that my job is to run through a brick wall to get stuff done.”

“What was so interesting culturally was as those building trades were working 24/7, we were seeing in Philly sports bars the Phillies game on TV, and the live stream I had running of those union workers rebuilding the road side by side. There was a civic pride. There were restaurants like Angelo’s who were taking free food over to people who were working there. There was a sense of pride, this belief that, ‘Hey, we can do big things. We can make things happen again.’ We’ve got to figure out a way to get back to that in this country. We have a president right now who speaks every day in negative terms about ripping things apart and tearing things down instead of building people back up.”

On Restoring Faith in Government:

“I have always been a reformer, and I think reform is possible without chaos. I think Donald Trump sometimes suggests that the chaos he brings forward is what you need in order to bring about change. I don’t think it works that way. I think you can reform and change without injecting chaos. And so I think our nation is going to need calm, steady leadership, a leadership that doesn’t want to take us backwards to what it was like before Trump, but wants to build something new – wants to bring back healthcare access to the millions of Americans who are going to lose it under Donald Trump, wants to bring back some equity in our tax system to make sure people are paying their fair share, who’s going to have to spend a whole lot of time overseas repairing our relationships with the world. I meet with ambassadors and foreign ministers with regularity, and one of the underlying questions they always want to know is, is this an aberration or is this the new normal for America? And I think the next president is going to have a real responsibility to do that work of repairing those relationships abroad, as well as the work here at home.”

“The other part of this that you raise is also critically important, is making sure institutions are trusted again, not building them back to what they looked like before. But I’m someone who believes that if you can give people a little bit of faith that the system is going to be fair and just and actually delivers something for you, then government can get back to being a force for good in people’s lives. There is such a cynicism, rightfully so, about government solving people’s problems at the federal level. It’s one of the things I’m proud of is that we solve problems here, and people walk away and go, “Huh, that actually worked.’” […]

“I think we need more aspiration in this country. I think we can do bigger things, and I think we are stale as a nation because of Donald Trump’s leadership right now — in terms of being able to build big things and do big things — and at the same time, more and more hate gets injected into our system with more chaos and cruelty and corruption because of the way he leads.”

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