Josh Shapiro's Pennsylvania re-election campaign aims for large victory to enhance presidential prospects Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania is conducting an audacious campaign bus tour through five counties where Donald Trump won by landslides in 2024. With a stratospheric 63 percent approval rating, Shapiro is attempting to run up the score in his re-election against Republican Stacy Garrity, a move that will bolster his candidacy for the 2028 Democratic national ticket. His strategy mirrors Franklin Delano Roosevelt's successful 1930 re-election campaign, which helped him reach the presidency. Pennsylvania's diverse population and its status as a pivotal swing state make a strong showing here particularly valuable for national ambitions. In a period when the geopolitics of U.S. elections seems out of sync - Republicans are on the defensive in places such as Kansas, which hasn't elected a Democratic senator in 94 years - Josh Shapiro's campaign schedule may stand out for its audacity. The Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania spent two days this week on a campaign bus tour through five counties where Donald Trump ran up landslide margins in 2024 of more than 61 percent each. In one of them, Blair County - the manufacturing base for the old-timey plaything the Slinky - Mr. Trump triumphed with 71 percent of the votes.Shapiro Re-election Boosts 2028 Presidential ProspectsBut like the toy, which operates by an irresistible combination of momentum and gravity, Mr. Shapiro is moving ahead, trying to run up his winning majority in his re-election fight against a hapless Republican candidate, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, whose campaign was doomed the day it began. Mr. Shapiro - whose approval rating is a stratospheric 63 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll - isn't saying so, but he knows that a strong showing in next week's election will enhance his chances of being on the 2028 Democratic national ticket, perhaps as the party's presidential nominee.Running up the score to boost a governor's national prospects is a well-tested technique, dating at least to 1930, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected governor of New York with 56.49 percent of the votes. Two years later, he was president.'That 1930 campaign was a lot like what Shapiro is trying to do in Pennsylvania,' said Jonathan Darman, author of the 2022 book 'Becoming FDR. ' 'The idea in both cases is to show you are very popular in your home state and also can reach certain kinds of voters that will say what kind of national coalition you can put together in a presidential campaign.Pennsylvania Demographics Mirror Historical FDR CoalitionYou can see in his 1930 campaign the beginning of the eventual FDR coalition of urban voters, agricultural workers, ethnic minorities and recent immigrants.' Pennsylvania, the largest and thus most valuable swing state in presidential elections, has that very mix of urban voters (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), agricultural workers (53,000 farms providing the direct livelihood of 124,259 people, particularly in the dairy and poultry sectors), ethnic minorities (12 percent Black, 10 percent Latino) and recent immigrants (more than 1.1 million, about 7.9 percent of the population, mostly from India, the Dominican Republic and China). The Quinnipiac Poll found that 59 percent of Pennsylvania voters said they sided with the Governor's re-election.Though governors here generally have been handily re-elected, Mr. Shapiro is the only one with presidential aspirations. Indeed, for a large, important political state, Pennsylvania has had an unusually small impact nationally, electing only one president (James Buchanan, in the White House from 1857 to 1861 as the country careered into the Civil War and is considered by historians among the country's worst chief executives), a marked contrast with Virginia and Ohio (eight each) and New York (five).But Mr. Shapiro has been part of the national political conversation since he was a finalist to be the running mate to Kamala Harris, who eventually chose Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota.Large Swing State Victory Enhances Governor Resumes'A large victory in a swing state is another thing to add to the resumé,' said Berwood Yost, a political scientist at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. 'The gubernatorial race is part of the political moment. The dissatisfaction people have about the economy and the job he's doing are positive factors for Shapiro, and he benefits from being of the party outside the White House.' The same factors are part of the race being conducted by JB Pritzker, who is gliding toward re-election as governor of Illinois while eyeing the White House. Mr. Pritzker, a billionaire, is adding to his prospects by engaging in another time-honoured practice: earning chits from party leaders, in his case by directing more than $40 million to Democratic campaign organizations and to candidates in states such as Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Ohio.Gubernatorial Victory Can Propel Candidates To PresidencyThe classic example of a gubernatorial victory catapulting someone to the presidency is George W. Bush, only the second Republican governor of Texas since 1869. He won 69 percent of the vote in his 1998 re-election campaign, including a surge of Hispanic support.'It was very important to have a big re-election number so he could show he could broaden the party,' said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's long-time political strategist, in an interview. 'The result was developing a nationwide network of donors that could bundle money for the presidential election. ' Bill Clinton's 58 percent in Arkansas in 1990 solidified his position as a future Democratic leader.