Pennsylvania
Josh Shapiro wasn’t on the ballot this year, but still spent millions campaigning. Here’s where the money went.
HARRISBURG — His name wasn’t on the ballot in 2024, but Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro still spent more than $5.5 million campaigning this year. Much of that money, however, didn’t go directly to the Democrats up for election in the commonwealth.
A review of Shapiro’s campaign finance reports for the year shows that he spent almost $1.3 million on pricey consultants, and almost $1 million on a combination of private airfare, hotels, and event planning in 13 states, including Pennsylvania, alongside smaller expenditures on new cameras and online clothing retailers.
Shapiro’s spokesperson, Manuel Bonder, said these expenses were all for the good of Democrats inside and outside Pennsylvania.
“Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Governor Shapiro was a top surrogate for candidates up and down the ballot and campaigned tirelessly across the Commonwealth and in key swing states — working to defend every single seat of the State House Democratic majority and elect pro-freedom candidates at every level,” Bonder said in a statement.
Shapiro raked a lot of donations into his already strong campaign account during and after his time as a vice presidential contender this summer. Newly filed reports show that he ended November with more than $10.6 million on hand.
Recent big donors included former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, California developer and stem cell research advocate Robert Klein, and Los Angeles-based talent manager Scooter Braun.
The cash puts Shapiro in a strong financial position heading into what could be a competitive 2026 reelection race while allowing him to continue to build a national brand.
Where exactly did Shapiro’s money go?
Shapiro spent more than $5.5 million out of his campaign account this year.
Of that, about $1.7 million went to Pennsylvania candidates. The rest went toward consultants, private flights, hotels, events and meals for his campaign in 13 states including Pennsylvania, among other expenses.
Of the $1.3 million the campaign put toward consulting, the biggest chunks went to Denver-based political advertising firm Ascend Digital Strategies and to California fundraising advisor Cooper Teboe. Each received $570,000 in fees.
Teboe, who connects major Silicon Valley donors to Democratic candidates, has worked with Shapiro previously. The governor’s financial reports routinely show millions of dollars from tech moguls like Reid Hoffman, who co-founded LinkedIn. He also receives donations from Hollywood producers and celebrities, and other West Coast megadonors like Karla Jurvetson and Jennifer Duda, who are both physicians.
Of the almost $1 million Shapiro spent on travel and accommodations, the majority — $641,000 — went toward private flights. He also spent at least $121,000 on hotels and $27,000 on meals.
Some of those expenses, such as $180 at an Michigan gastropub and $725 at Atlanta’s Ritz-Carlton, illustrate his frequent stops in other swing states in the lead-up to the presidential election.
Shapiro also spent at least $185,000 to attend the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Nearly 80% of that tab went toward renting an event space at a renovated church where he hosted attendees during the four-day affair.
Shapiro also spent $18,000 on hotels in California and $14,000 on lodging in Florida. Most of the latter paid for time at the five-star Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, which advertises that “guests are welcomed with champagne, breathtaking ocean views and cooling tropical breezes.”
His campaign also spent more than $34,000 on hotels in Philadelphia — though he lives just outside of the city — including $13,000 at the swanky Four Seasons, where guests can “revel in breathtaking, unobstructed views” of the city from the 60th floor of the Comcast Center.
Bonder told Spotlight PA that the Four Seasons expense was related to Shapiro hosting an annual policy conference for the Democratic Governors Association.
How did Shapiro help Pa. Dems?
Many of the candidates down the ballot foundered in the commonwealth this year.
While Democrats narrowly kept their majority in the state House and didn’t lose ground in the GOP-controlled state Senate, Republicans easily won races for Pennsylvania’s three row offices — attorney general, auditor general and treasurer.
Democrats told Spotlight PA that they don’t blame Shapiro, or any other single person, for those losses. However, several operatives for the party said they wished the governor had used some of the millions he still has on hand to boost state candidates a little more.
Most spoke on condition of anonymity because of Shapiro’s power within the party.
The money Shapiro donated to state-level Democrats on the ballot in 2024 amounted to about 30% of his total campaign spending for the year.
He gave $1.25 million and $350,000 to the state House and Senate campaign committees, respectively. He also gave $100,000 to attorney general candidate Eugene DePasquale and $25,000 to auditor general candidate Malcolm Kenyatta.
Shapiro’s predecessor, Democrat Tom Wolf, spent just $210,000 on down-ballot Pennsylvania races in 2016, though he ended the year with much less on hand than Shapiro — $1.7 million.
But in 2020, without a reelection race to run, Wolf poured $2.6 million into lower-level Democratic general election campaigns, particularly for legislative seats in the then GOP-controlled General Assembly.
Chuck Pascal, who chaired the campaign of Democratic treasurer candidate Erin McClelland and runs the Armstrong County Democratic Committee, told Spotlight PA that additional money from Shapiro likely would have made little difference given the party’s weak performance across the board.
Shapiro gave no money to McClelland, a political outsider. She raised far less than Kenyatta, for instance, but ultimately got only 20,000 fewer votes than he did.
But Pascal, who noted he was speaking for himself and not McClelland, does think there’s at least one area where Shapiro could have done more.
“The one glaring thing in the results was that turnout was down in the Southeast, and particularly in Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties,” he said.
Shapiro is from Montgomery County. He previously represented a state House district there and served as county commissioner.
“Given the governor’s political strength in the southeast,” Pascal added, more spending there to increase voter engagement “could have been a place where he could at least have saved Bob Casey.”
Casey, Pennsylvania’s senior Democratic U.S. Senator, lost his race by just more than 15,000 votes.
According to Shapiro’s campaign, the governor appeared at 25 public events in Southeast Pennsylvania between late July — when President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid — and Election Day.
The extent of the work that a governor, or any other political figure, does for their party during an election doesn’t all show up in public reports. A governor can join fundraising calls to help persuade donors, appear at national events to talk about important races in their state, or share intelligence about likely donors with various campaign committees — among other intangibles.
Bonder, Shapiro’s spokesperson, said that’s what Shapiro was doing. “His work to make key endorsements, stump at events, raise money, film digital and TV ads, and more was unmatched in Pennsylvania,” he said.
For instance, the Saturday before the election, Shapiro appeared at two canvass kickoffs for swing district Democratic candidates — one in Bucks County and one in Northampton County.
At the former, Shapiro warmed up the dozens-deep crowd gathered in a suburban park for state Rep. Brian Munroe, D-Bucks, extolling them that “you have the power in your hand” to ensure that Democrats win up and down the ballot before introducing Munroe to cheers.
Munroe would go on to win by 1,100 votes, one of the key wins that preserved House Democrats’ majority. He told Spotlight PA he thinks there were a number of reasons he came out on top — but having Shapiro in his corner definitely didn’t hurt.
When Munroe was knocking doors in the weeks leading up to the election, he got a strong sense of the governor’s broad appeal.
“I met a significant number of Republicans who said when (Shapiro) was in the running for vice president, they would have loved to see him in the role,” Munroe said.
Of complaints that Shapiro could have done more, Bonder said, “While I understand that some people in politics level bad faith criticisms in order to see their names in the paper, the reality is no one in this commonwealth worked harder than Gov. Josh Shapiro this fall to show up, raise money, film ads, and support and elect candidates who will protect real freedom and get stuff done.”
Jeff Coleman, a Republican operative, argued that Shapiro’s national visibility gave his donors exactly what they wanted: They wrote checks because they believe in his long-term political prospects.
“When you are writing a check to Gov. Shapiro, you are writing it to whatever the next chapter looks like,” Coleman said. “You are writing a check with the hope you are going to be part of history. That’s the type of brand his team built.”
Consultants also noted that the big cash reserve Shapiro has could allow him to put dollars into next year’s judicial retention elections, during which three justices elected as Democrats will run for new 10-year terms.
Kate Huangpu of Spotlight PA contributed reporting for this story.
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania. Sign up for our newsletters at spotlightpa.org/newsletters.
Before you go, if you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.
Originally Published:
Pennsylvania
An Outpouring of Frustration Over Pennsylvania’s Rapid Data Center Growth – Inside Climate News
The latest example of burgeoning opposition to rapid data-center development in Pennsylvania came at a town hall meeting overflowing with frustration about how the state is managing the surge.
As about 225 people watched, more than 20 speakers in the two-hour online forum late Wednesday spoke about resistance to an industry they blame for rising electricity prices, heavy water use, noise pollution and rural industrialization. Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has tried to thread the needle of welcoming data centers while proposing some guardrails, was a frequent target.
“This is a public trust and transparency issue,” said Jennifer Dusart, a small business owner and resident of Mechanicsburg, near the state capital. “Too many Americans are finding out about these projects after decisions have been made. We have been bulldozed over, and when citizens have raised concerns, they are often dismissed as uninformed, emotional or anti-progress.”
According to the Data Center Proposal Tracker, Pennsylvania has nearly 60 data centers that have been officially proposed, are in early planning stages, have received approval to build or are under construction.
Karen Feridun of the environmental nonprofit Better Path Coalition, which organized the town hall, said the Pennsylvania Data Center Resistance Facebook group she started in January with a few dozen members now has more than 12,000 followers. Kelly Donia of East Whiteland Township in southeastern Pennsylvania, who lives near a proposed data center, said she’s a registered Democrat who had been excited about speculation in 2024 that Shapiro would be the Democratic vice presidential candidate. But she said she no longer supports him because he has courted data centers. “He is losing his base,” she said. “I want him to hear this loud and freaking clear. I’m going to make it my job to make sure that man never gets elected again for any office.”
While an Emerson College survey in November found that Pennsylvanians were split on data-center development—38 percent supported it, while 35 percent opposed it—opposition to such development close to home was more pronounced. A February poll of registered voters in the state by Quinnipiac University found even more pushback: 68 percent said they would oppose a data center for AI in their community.
Neither the Data Center Coalition, an industry group, nor Pennsylvania Data Center Partners, a developer of large data centers, responded to requests for comment, though industry advocates have said the growth will bring jobs and tax revenue to the state.
The Shapiro administration said it seeks to protect communities while reaping the economic benefits of the booming data center industry.
“If companies want the Commonwealth’s full support — including access to tax credits and faster permitting — they must meet strict expectations around transparency, environmental protection, and community impact,” Rosie Lapowsky, a Shapiro spokesperson, said in a statement. “This is about setting a higher bar for projects, not lowering it, and ensuring development happens responsibly and in a way that benefits Pennsylvanians.”
In February, Shapiro proposed standards as part of his budget address, including that new data centers seeking state support must either provide their own power rather than drawing it from the grid, or fully fund their power needs and the transmission infrastructure that comes with them.
Feridun said Shapiro did not respond to multiple invitations to attend the town hall, which she thinks the state should have hosted to give people a chance to express their concerns about data centers.
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Colby Wesner of the activist group Concerned Citizens of Montour County, which successfully opposed a data center, criticized House lawmakers for passing the Shapiro-supported HB 2151, which would require state officials to draft a model ordinance that towns could use to respond to data center applications.
Supporters say its use would be voluntary and it would help local officials protect quality of life in their communities. But Wesner believes it will benefit the industry if enacted: “There is absolutely no way this ordinance won’t be a data center developer’s dream.”
Donia urged townships to change their zoning so they have the legal right to deny data center applications in places they don’t want them. Without carefully zoned land, towns are vulnerable to lawsuits from developers, she said.
“If you’ve got terrible ordinances in your township, and you add in bad zoning, guess what? You get a hyperscale data center,” she said.
The surge in data center projects in Pennsylvania has been driven by tax breaks for developers, as allowed by a 2021 law that lawmakers should repeal, said Republican state Rep. Jamie Walsh, who spoke at the town hall event. In Virginia, the state with the most data centers, developers have to pay a sales and use tax, but Pennsylvania doesn’t require that, he said.
“That has made Pennsylvania a target. In Virginia, they have to pay tax on the contents of those buildings. Pennsylvania will never realize that. That is why we’ve become ground zero,” said Walsh, who represents Luzerne County in northeast Pennsylvania.
State Sen. Katie Muth, a Democrat who represents part of the Philadelphia suburbs, plans to introduce a bill to place a three-year moratorium on data center development so state and local governments can first study and plan for the industry. She announced the bill in a legislative memo in February and expects to introduce it soon, a spokesman said.
Muth told activists at the town hall that the data center industry has not done enough to fully disclose its plans to the public. ”This has all been planned long before any of us had a clue, so don’t feel that you missed all these things,” she said. “You were supposed to; no one wanted you to know about it.”
Michael Sauers, a retired school teacher from Bloomsburg, southwest of Scranton, called on officials to amend the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, a regulation first published in 1970.
“This has to be strengthened to empower communities to be able to say no to unwanted development that is being shoved down their throats,” he said. “Communities must be empowered to reject top-down development that gives them little or no voice in the future.”
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Pennsylvania
Man arrested for allegedly posting hit list, threatening more than a dozen Pennsylvania lawmakers
LEBANON, Pa. — A Lebanon County, Pennsylvania man is charged with making terroristic threats and accused of creating a hit list of 20 Democrats, many from the Philadelphia region.
Adam Berryhill’s X handle goes by Pennsylvania Militia.
On it, state police say he posted, “I can’t wait for Memorial Day Operation.”
His thread also displayed guns, and he called local politicians gun-grabbing communists. His alleged hit list included state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of North Philadelphia.
“I’ll tell you to a certain degree, not that much shock. You know this is not the first time I’ve been the victim of threats,” Kenyatta told ABC Philadelphia affiliate WPVI.
He says the threats have no impact on his governing.
State police say among the other local Democrats named by Berryhill are congressional candidates Sharif Street, Chris Raab and others, like state Rep. Morgan Cephas.
A routine investigation by the state police detail assigned to state House Speaker Joanna McClinton led to the discovery of the alleged terroristic threats.
Berryhill was arrested and charged last week.
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“It’s not about being a Democrat or Republican or an independent. This is about American belief, that in America, Philadelphia, where it all started, that you get to say you believe without any threat of violence,” Kenyatta said.
Court records say Berryhill also criticized Republicans. In another post, he said they need to stop whining and claimed the only solution is war.
Charging documents say Berryhill has been involuntarily committed in the past and is prohibited from possessing firearms.
“It’s deeply uncomfortable for anybody to be doing a job just serving your neighbors. You did not sign up to be in the crosshairs of someone who is unhinged and violent,” Kenyatta said from his North Philadelphia district offices.
Court records say Berryhill was unable to make bail.
Calls to his public defender have not been returned.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro issued the following statement on the arrest:
“Today, I spoke with Speaker McClinton and Leader Costa about the terroristic threats made against members of their caucuses in the State Legislature. I told them that while these threats of political violence seek to intimidate and silence, my administration will continue to do everything in our power to keep them safe and ensure their members can continue to make their voices heard as the people’s elected representatives.
We are experiencing a dangerous rise in threats of political violence across the Commonwealth and I appreciate the quick action of the Pennsylvania State Police and the Lebanon County District Attorney to charge and arrest the perpetrator. It is also clear a better process is necessary to notify elected officials directly when these threats are made. Lt. Colonel Bivens has spoken extensively with House and Senate leadership and their teams, and the Pennsylvania State Police have instituted a new process to notify members of the General Assembly immediately and directly of any and all threats of violence against them.
It is on all of us to combat hate speech and political violence, and I call on all of my fellow Pennsylvanians and fellow leaders to stand up against this dangerous rising tide of violence we are seeing across our country.”
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Shirley Ann Dailey, 89, of Daytona Beach, Florida (formerly of Montoursville, Pennsylvania), passed away peacefully on February 23, 2026, surrounded by her family at AdventHealth Hospital in Daytona Beach.
Born December 14, 1936, in Sayre, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of the late John and Laura (Reinbold) White. She met the love of her life, Gordon Ell Dailey whom she shared over 60 years of marriage until his passing in 2023.
Shirley grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Dushore, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Turnpike High School in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, and continued her education with two years of college. She went on to have a distinguished career spanning more than 40 years. Her professional journey included roles with the Social Security Administration, General Motors, Pennsylvania Department of General Services, and most notably, 30 years of dedicated service with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). She served as an Administrative Assistant to the District Executive for PennDOT Engineering District 3-0. Shirley took great pride in her work and spoke fondly of her time at PennDOT throughout her retirement.
In her personal life, Shirley enjoyed collecting artwork, caring for her home, taking walks, bicycling, and vacationing with her family.
Surviving is a son, David (Crista) Dailey of Daytona Beach, Fla.; a grandson, Garrett Dailey, of Daytona Beach, Fla.; sisters, Regina (Drew) Bagley of Shunk, Pa., and Deborah (Ray) Thall of Mechanicsburg, Pa. She is also survived by numerous nieces and nephews.
In addition to her parents and husband, Shirley was preceded in death by a sister, Margaret Pier, and a brother, William White.
Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at McCarty-Thomas Funeral Home, 733 Broad Street, Montoursville, Pennsylvania, with Pastor David Smith officiating. Burial will follow in Twin Hills Memorial Park, Muncy. Friends may call from 9 to 10 a.m. Wednesday at the funeral home.
Expressions of sympathy may be sent to the family at mccarthythomas.com.
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