Meet Janelle Stelson’s biggest surrogate: Josh Shapiro

Gov. Josh Shapiro is making it his mission to help Janelle Stelson defeat Scott Perry in the upcoming election. Shapiro continued lobbing blistering remarks at Perry in front of Stelson supporters this past weekend.  

With less than 60 days until Election Day, Gov. Josh Shapiro has emerged as one of Janelle Stelson’s most important surrogates, and he is letting voters living in South Central Pennsylvania know that he really doesn’t think much of Congressman Scott Perry (R-York). 

Stelson is a former TV news anchor in the Harrisburg area for over 25 years, and left her job last September to challenge Perry in the upcoming election. 

“Under Scott Perry’s leadership together with his sidekick Donald Trump, they ripped away freedom for millions of women across this country to simply make decisions over their own bodies,” Shapiro told Stelson supporters on Saturday. 

“In addition to that, they continue to threaten people here in this commonwealth and across the country based on what you look like, where you come from, who you love or who you pray to. To say ‘we’re going to take away more of your freedom,’ Scott has learned from Donald Trump the art of creating others in our society.” 

Last month, Shapiro said Perry was “fundamentally full of shit” for trying to overturn Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results in favor of Trump and promised voters that he is going to try and do everything in his power to unseat Perry. 

Close to 100 Stelson supporters packed a conference room inside SEIU Healthcare PA’s Harrisburg’s office to listen to Shapiro and Stelson on Saturday as they launched their door-knocking efforts.

In 2022, Shapiro defeated State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin) by 12 points in Perry’s district, and has become one of Pennsylvania’s most popular governors in recent memory. 

Throughout her campaign, Stelson has compared Perry, the former leader of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, to Mastriano, making the case that Perry is just as much an extremist as Mastriano. 

“Josh Shapiro won this district, this +4 red district by 12 honking points,” Stelson said. “It’s a thinking district. We actually do our homework and vote for the best candidate. That’s why we have him in office and that’s why we helped put him there.”

Following Saturday’s event, Shapiro and Stelson spoke with reporters, and Shapiro made the case that Pennsylvanians are tired of Trump’s and Perry’s extremist rhetoric. 

“In 2016, Donald Trump won here in Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. Every single time Donald Trump or his political offspring have been on the ballot since then, they’ve lost,” Shapiro said. 

“We’ve seen school board members who have adopted Trump’s plans to ban books defeated. Anytime you’ve had a competitive district or across the state, someone running on Donald Trump’s messaging or Scott Perry’s messaging or their platforms, they’ve lost.”

“The good people of Pennsylvania see through all that extremism and they want people who are common sense leaders who are going to go fight for us every single day. Janelle is one of those common sense leaders.”