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Yes - KEYSTONE TOPS: Governors of Pennsylvania since the Carter years
KEYSTONE TOPS: Governors of Pennsylvania since the Carter years
Gov. Milton Shapp 1971-79
Gov. Richard "Dick" Thornburgh 1979-83
Gov. Peter F. Flaherty 1983-89 [1]
Gov. William W. Scranton III 1989-95 [2]
Gov. Edmund G. "Ed" Rendell 1995-99 [3]
Gov. Arlen Specter 1999-2005 [4]
Gov Hillary Rodham Heinz 2005-2011 [5]
Gov. Charles W. "Charlie" Dent 2011-2015 [6]
Gov. Luke R. Ravenstahl 2015- [7]
[1] It was a hard job, being Deputy Attorney General of the United States, harder in some ways because of what and who he had to deal with, than being Mayor of Pittsburgh, but he stuck at it. Loyalty was supposed to have its rewards even if it meant leaving himself out of the race to succeed Milt Shapp, and that he would always believe let that bespectacled milquetoast Thornburgh in. But he had a plan: come home, run for a General Assembly seat in the next cycle and start making as many friends as he could before Thornburgh was up again. Sure he was the hero of Three Mile Island, but this was a brutal recession, even worse than the won he'd fought in Pittsburgh when OPEC shut off the oil, and it was the Republicans' fault. That gave him not one but two terms in the governor's chair, until newly-elected President Hart gave him an offer he had a hard time refusing, running two major national initiatives as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And if he had to leave his seat to the other party, there were worse choices..
[2] Scion of one of Pennsylvania's greatest families, son of one of the last great liberal Republicans, still dogged by the "long-haired hippie" image from the right of both parties (and there was still plenty of "right" left among steel-town Democrats), Bill Scranton III seemed to have climbed as high up the greasy pole as he could as a third-term Lieutenant Governor, when suddenly the world moved and Flaherty was out of the way. Incumbency, he found was a powerful thing, as conservatives in the state party swallowed their objections and backed him for his own term, running to the left on many issues of "four-time loser" Bob Casey, Pennsylvania's most famous conservative Democrat. But what he'd hoped was the freedom to make his own way in the governor's chair was far more limited than he thought. A major primary challenge as he headed for a second full term left him mortally wounded at the polls, and many of the same moderate independents who had given him a solid win the first time wandered towards the Democrats and the right of his own party stayed home out of spite. It was hardly a fair thing to happen to a Scranton, but we can't choose what others think of us out in the world
[3] The man of the "Philadelphia Miracle," reforming mayor Ed Rendell had really wanted to stay in his job: his city was going places, the national party had taken notice, he was feted at mayors' conferences and eastern Pennsylvania looked to him as the man of the future. But the party came calling, and they made a compelling argument that the Pennsylvania GOP was at war with itself, the right so long a second-fiddle to the state's tradition of moderate-to-liberal Republican governors had decided that shanking Scranton was more important than winning. The siren call finally reached him, and Rendell threw his not insubstantial self into the race. It was a success, and he spent most of the next four years trying to bring the turnaround of Philadelphia into the Rust Belt towns of "Pennsyltucky." But state politics is never without its corruption scandals, and a major one enveloped a series of Democratic committee chairs in the Assembly as re-election loomed for the governor. It was a calculated risk on one hand, but an emotional choice on the other: stall and perseverate for the men who turned out the votes at precinct level, or try to clean house and try to ride his reputation to reelection. For all his faults, Ed was a reformer at heart; he stepped back and let the investigations go forward. And, come November, he lost by a scant six thousand votes to a dean of Pennsylvania politics who had come home, six thousand votes that might easily have turned up in a handful of Assembly districts whose elected officials were haggling over their plea deals...
[4] After eighteen years in the increasingly partisan United States Senate, Arlen Specter decided to retire, on the one hand doing the right wing of his state party the favor of nominating a replacement more to their liking, on the other considering whether to change pace into something else. To his own surprise as much as other people's, he took a look at the Republican primary field back home in Pennsylvania, with the gubernatorial cycle at hand, and decided that the three men running were either too minor or too far to the right to unseat Rendell. He threw his hat in. In a primary runoff he defeated the leading contender and, aware of Rendell's favorable despite the early stages of the committee-chair corruption scandal, grudgingly got behind Specter. It was a wise choice. Specter rode a general Republican wave, and by the time of his reelection had some of the highest favorability ratings since the end of Flaherty's term, or Thornbugh's after Three Mile. He saw off a challenge from his Democratic lieutenant governor, and settled in to a second term with an agenda of infrastructure repair and budget reconciliation, thinking about whether he might like to age into a third term after all. Hodgkin's lymphoma, however, had other ideas. Specter, ever the gentleman, discussed the situation with his doctors, and the aggressive course of treatment they recommended, and resigned his position, even though it meant a transfer of party.
[5] Handsome, intelligent, Rockefeller Republican Senator John Heinz seemed to be a rising star in the 1970s. But the tragic death of his first wife -- an exotic and aristocratic beauty -- in the Tenerife air disaster of 1978 set him back into his own world, simply carrying on with his duties and the famous family name and looking after his children. Within eighteen months however he met a woman, herself still recovering some years after the end of a major relationship at Yale Law School, and a lead counsel for the National Organization of Women. They admired one another's drive and principle, and within another couple of years one of Washington's most notable bipartisan power couples was born (she a neoliberal Democrat, he a Rockefeller Republican, were objects of occasional praise from columnists droning on about the "decent middle" of American politics.) After Heinz's tragic death, Hillary Rodham Heinz turned her attention to her family and the family foundation, and the maintenance of her husband's legacy. But the politics bug was a hard one to shake. In the middle of the decade she took an Assembly seat for a couple of terms, virtually guaranteed by her married name, to "learn the business," and made a successful run for Lieutenant Governor. She tried unseating Governor Specter, unsuccessfully, but kept her job and when his cancer diagnosis shook Harrisburg, she moved unexpectedly into the top job. Determined to show her chops, she launched a raft of policy initiatives, made a point of touring every town over 5,000 people in the state, battled for foreign investment in Pittsburgh, shepherded a bill that extended Medicaid-style supplemental insurance to all children in the state, and won a term in her own right. In 2008 she set her sights higher, running in the presidential primaries; she made the list of the nominee's (two-time North Carolina governor Harvey Gantt's) vice presidential choices, though he decided in the end running an African American nominee with a woman as running mate might be too much for the electorate at one time. Disappointed, she returned to the governor's mansion, eyes set on another term. But it seemed time for scandal again: Republican Assemblymen launched an investigation into the possible improper mixing of management of state affairs and Heinz Foundation business, conducted off the official state government grid on private email servers. Adding to the nagging imputation of scandal, more implied than proved, was an economic downturn; Heinz's defense of herself was taken as standoffishness and she narrowly lost to another Pennsylvania GOP compromise between the rightward drift of the national party and statewide electability.
[6] Charlie Dent, a familiar and competent Pennsylvania congressman, a founding member of the "Main Street Republicans" moderate caucus, a man happy in his job hoping to maneuver past favored right-wingers for a possible committee chairmanship, suddenly found himself the object of delegations from Harrisburg, plying and smiling and wheedling to encourage him into the upcoming governor's race. As a face of perceived moderation, he would put a friendly official mug on the Pennsylvania GOP's right wing and its efforts to erode Governor Heinz's credibility. In the end he was able to do the job, smiling and thoughtful and promising to be a voice for Pennsylvania's now-hurting suburbs both in Harrisburg and through his Washington connections. It was a good sell. But despite Dent's patient groundedness, events, particularly economic ones, were not kind. He could not survive the pressure from his Assembly delegation's right wing without intervening against two major coal strikes which cost him with unions across the state, and any economic recovery in the suburbs was tepid and failed to stretch to the ethnic and minority neighborhoods of the big cities. It was there dissatisfaction brewed, and from there that the challenge to the governor emerged.
[7] Luke Ravenstahl came to Pennsylvania Democratic campaign operatives as if out of a dream. A tall, handsome, Catholic-high-school football star turned excellent college student, aggressive young political activist, and Pittsburgh's youngest mayor -- even younger than Pete Flaherty started, and not even out of his twenties yet -- Ravenstahl was a central-casting solution to crafting a media image that could beat Dent's amiable but tepid public persona. Some asked whether it was wise to run someone this young at the higher level, whether he had built enough connections, compiled enough favors, to really use Pittsburgh as his base for a shot at something bigger. But wise campaign flacks know that when they've found lightning in a bottle, it is better to uncork it and see where things go than fail to use that kind of power. The Catholic football letterman played well in Pennsyltucky, and his connections to neighborhood-based development and the patchwork of Pittsburgh's ethnic communities also recommended him in Philly. It wasn't an easy thing -- Dent's campaign played hard on Ravenstahl's lack of age and experience -- but it was in the end enough. For better or worse, whether he would turn out to be up to the job or just bright promises that didn't pan out, Ravenstahl was Pennsylvania's youngest governor, and determined not to leave office while that was still true.
Gov. Milton Shapp 1971-79
Gov. Richard "Dick" Thornburgh 1979-83
Gov. Peter F. Flaherty 1983-89 [1]
Gov. William W. Scranton III 1989-95 [2]
Gov. Edmund G. "Ed" Rendell 1995-99 [3]
Gov. Arlen Specter 1999-2005 [4]
Gov Hillary Rodham Heinz 2005-2011 [5]
Gov. Charles W. "Charlie" Dent 2011-2015 [6]
Gov. Luke R. Ravenstahl 2015- [7]
[1] It was a hard job, being Deputy Attorney General of the United States, harder in some ways because of what and who he had to deal with, than being Mayor of Pittsburgh, but he stuck at it. Loyalty was supposed to have its rewards even if it meant leaving himself out of the race to succeed Milt Shapp, and that he would always believe let that bespectacled milquetoast Thornburgh in. But he had a plan: come home, run for a General Assembly seat in the next cycle and start making as many friends as he could before Thornburgh was up again. Sure he was the hero of Three Mile Island, but this was a brutal recession, even worse than the won he'd fought in Pittsburgh when OPEC shut off the oil, and it was the Republicans' fault. That gave him not one but two terms in the governor's chair, until newly-elected President Hart gave him an offer he had a hard time refusing, running two major national initiatives as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And if he had to leave his seat to the other party, there were worse choices..
[2] Scion of one of Pennsylvania's greatest families, son of one of the last great liberal Republicans, still dogged by the "long-haired hippie" image from the right of both parties (and there was still plenty of "right" left among steel-town Democrats), Bill Scranton III seemed to have climbed as high up the greasy pole as he could as a third-term Lieutenant Governor, when suddenly the world moved and Flaherty was out of the way. Incumbency, he found was a powerful thing, as conservatives in the state party swallowed their objections and backed him for his own term, running to the left on many issues of "four-time loser" Bob Casey, Pennsylvania's most famous conservative Democrat. But what he'd hoped was the freedom to make his own way in the governor's chair was far more limited than he thought. A major primary challenge as he headed for a second full term left him mortally wounded at the polls, and many of the same moderate independents who had given him a solid win the first time wandered towards the Democrats and the right of his own party stayed home out of spite. It was hardly a fair thing to happen to a Scranton, but we can't choose what others think of us out in the world
[3] The man of the "Philadelphia Miracle," reforming mayor Ed Rendell had really wanted to stay in his job: his city was going places, the national party had taken notice, he was feted at mayors' conferences and eastern Pennsylvania looked to him as the man of the future. But the party came calling, and they made a compelling argument that the Pennsylvania GOP was at war with itself, the right so long a second-fiddle to the state's tradition of moderate-to-liberal Republican governors had decided that shanking Scranton was more important than winning. The siren call finally reached him, and Rendell threw his not insubstantial self into the race. It was a success, and he spent most of the next four years trying to bring the turnaround of Philadelphia into the Rust Belt towns of "Pennsyltucky." But state politics is never without its corruption scandals, and a major one enveloped a series of Democratic committee chairs in the Assembly as re-election loomed for the governor. It was a calculated risk on one hand, but an emotional choice on the other: stall and perseverate for the men who turned out the votes at precinct level, or try to clean house and try to ride his reputation to reelection. For all his faults, Ed was a reformer at heart; he stepped back and let the investigations go forward. And, come November, he lost by a scant six thousand votes to a dean of Pennsylvania politics who had come home, six thousand votes that might easily have turned up in a handful of Assembly districts whose elected officials were haggling over their plea deals...
[4] After eighteen years in the increasingly partisan United States Senate, Arlen Specter decided to retire, on the one hand doing the right wing of his state party the favor of nominating a replacement more to their liking, on the other considering whether to change pace into something else. To his own surprise as much as other people's, he took a look at the Republican primary field back home in Pennsylvania, with the gubernatorial cycle at hand, and decided that the three men running were either too minor or too far to the right to unseat Rendell. He threw his hat in. In a primary runoff he defeated the leading contender and, aware of Rendell's favorable despite the early stages of the committee-chair corruption scandal, grudgingly got behind Specter. It was a wise choice. Specter rode a general Republican wave, and by the time of his reelection had some of the highest favorability ratings since the end of Flaherty's term, or Thornbugh's after Three Mile. He saw off a challenge from his Democratic lieutenant governor, and settled in to a second term with an agenda of infrastructure repair and budget reconciliation, thinking about whether he might like to age into a third term after all. Hodgkin's lymphoma, however, had other ideas. Specter, ever the gentleman, discussed the situation with his doctors, and the aggressive course of treatment they recommended, and resigned his position, even though it meant a transfer of party.
[5] Handsome, intelligent, Rockefeller Republican Senator John Heinz seemed to be a rising star in the 1970s. But the tragic death of his first wife -- an exotic and aristocratic beauty -- in the Tenerife air disaster of 1978 set him back into his own world, simply carrying on with his duties and the famous family name and looking after his children. Within eighteen months however he met a woman, herself still recovering some years after the end of a major relationship at Yale Law School, and a lead counsel for the National Organization of Women. They admired one another's drive and principle, and within another couple of years one of Washington's most notable bipartisan power couples was born (she a neoliberal Democrat, he a Rockefeller Republican, were objects of occasional praise from columnists droning on about the "decent middle" of American politics.) After Heinz's tragic death, Hillary Rodham Heinz turned her attention to her family and the family foundation, and the maintenance of her husband's legacy. But the politics bug was a hard one to shake. In the middle of the decade she took an Assembly seat for a couple of terms, virtually guaranteed by her married name, to "learn the business," and made a successful run for Lieutenant Governor. She tried unseating Governor Specter, unsuccessfully, but kept her job and when his cancer diagnosis shook Harrisburg, she moved unexpectedly into the top job. Determined to show her chops, she launched a raft of policy initiatives, made a point of touring every town over 5,000 people in the state, battled for foreign investment in Pittsburgh, shepherded a bill that extended Medicaid-style supplemental insurance to all children in the state, and won a term in her own right. In 2008 she set her sights higher, running in the presidential primaries; she made the list of the nominee's (two-time North Carolina governor Harvey Gantt's) vice presidential choices, though he decided in the end running an African American nominee with a woman as running mate might be too much for the electorate at one time. Disappointed, she returned to the governor's mansion, eyes set on another term. But it seemed time for scandal again: Republican Assemblymen launched an investigation into the possible improper mixing of management of state affairs and Heinz Foundation business, conducted off the official state government grid on private email servers. Adding to the nagging imputation of scandal, more implied than proved, was an economic downturn; Heinz's defense of herself was taken as standoffishness and she narrowly lost to another Pennsylvania GOP compromise between the rightward drift of the national party and statewide electability.
[6] Charlie Dent, a familiar and competent Pennsylvania congressman, a founding member of the "Main Street Republicans" moderate caucus, a man happy in his job hoping to maneuver past favored right-wingers for a possible committee chairmanship, suddenly found himself the object of delegations from Harrisburg, plying and smiling and wheedling to encourage him into the upcoming governor's race. As a face of perceived moderation, he would put a friendly official mug on the Pennsylvania GOP's right wing and its efforts to erode Governor Heinz's credibility. In the end he was able to do the job, smiling and thoughtful and promising to be a voice for Pennsylvania's now-hurting suburbs both in Harrisburg and through his Washington connections. It was a good sell. But despite Dent's patient groundedness, events, particularly economic ones, were not kind. He could not survive the pressure from his Assembly delegation's right wing without intervening against two major coal strikes which cost him with unions across the state, and any economic recovery in the suburbs was tepid and failed to stretch to the ethnic and minority neighborhoods of the big cities. It was there dissatisfaction brewed, and from there that the challenge to the governor emerged.
[7] Luke Ravenstahl came to Pennsylvania Democratic campaign operatives as if out of a dream. A tall, handsome, Catholic-high-school football star turned excellent college student, aggressive young political activist, and Pittsburgh's youngest mayor -- even younger than Pete Flaherty started, and not even out of his twenties yet -- Ravenstahl was a central-casting solution to crafting a media image that could beat Dent's amiable but tepid public persona. Some asked whether it was wise to run someone this young at the higher level, whether he had built enough connections, compiled enough favors, to really use Pittsburgh as his base for a shot at something bigger. But wise campaign flacks know that when they've found lightning in a bottle, it is better to uncork it and see where things go than fail to use that kind of power. The Catholic football letterman played well in Pennsyltucky, and his connections to neighborhood-based development and the patchwork of Pittsburgh's ethnic communities also recommended him in Philly. It wasn't an easy thing -- Dent's campaign played hard on Ravenstahl's lack of age and experience -- but it was in the end enough. For better or worse, whether he would turn out to be up to the job or just bright promises that didn't pan out, Ravenstahl was Pennsylvania's youngest governor, and determined not to leave office while that was still true.
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