Good afternoon everyone,

It’s Thursday, Oct. 22, and welcome back to another edition of the Keystone Labor Report. You can find last week’s edition here.

We are 12 days away from the election, which is Nov. 3, and voters have until Oct. 27 to apply for a mail-in ballot or vote on-demand at their local county election offices. With election day getting closer, advocates want voters to return their ballot as quickly as possible or drop off their ballots at a drop box or county election office.

Sean Kitchen

Political Correspondent, The Keystone

(Sean Kitchen / The Keystone)

Since the start of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s reelection campaign, labor unions have been front and center, and this past weekend in Wilkes-Barre was no different.

Over 100 people crammed the Heat and Frost Insulators Local 38 union hall on Saturday for a canvass launch featuring Shapiro and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti (D).

Shapiro touted his first-term labor record, which includes funding vocational education and apprenticeship programs and removing college-degree barriers for thousands of jobs with the commonwealth.

“I respect the union way of life. I believe in the fact that unions built this commonwealth, and they’re not just an important part of our heritage, but they’re critically important for the future of Pennsylvania,” Shapiro told reporters.

In 2022, Shapiro won union voters by a 22-point margin.

With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest billionaire, is pouring millions of dollars defending Republicans into key state Senate races.

With the chamber up for grabs, Democrats are looking to flip the Senate for the first time in more than 30 years, giving them a legislative trifecta with Democrats controlling the House and the governor’s mansion.

Campaign finance reports show that State Sen. Frank Farry (R-Bucks) received $3.5 million from PA Education Choice, which is funded by Yass’ Students First Political Action Committee. According to Stephen Caruso from Spotlight PA, the donation accounts for 75% of the money Farry has raised since June.

Yass, who has a net worth of $77 billion thanks to his investments in TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is one of the Republican Party’s largest donors. He is a vocal proponent of charter schools and school vouchers.

“We already knew Frank Farry voted to raise the gas tax, block the minimum wage, and give big tax breaks to data centers while his law firm represented the Bucks County data center developers,” Eileen Hartnett Albillar, the Democratic candidate running against Farry, said in a statement. “Now we find out his campaign is being bankrolled by a billionaire who wants to defund our schools, forcing property taxes to go up in Bucks County.”

Speaking of Yass, ProPublica highlights how Yass and other billionaires unseated a West Virginia lawmaker after he wanted to put limits on school vouchers. You can read that here.
US Rep. Scott Perry’s (R-York) congressional campaign launched an unsubstantiated attack ad claiming that Janelle Stelson (D), his opponent and former WGAL anchor, was caught tanning naked at her home, per The Keystone’s Pat Berkery.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate left Harrisburg going into the election without raising the minimum wage, per The Keystone’s Ashley Adams.

(Sean Kitchen / The Keystone)

Firefighters from across Pennsylvania are rallying behind Bob Brooks after Republicans in the Lehigh Valley are claiming that they found discrepancies in tax filings from the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association’s (PPFFA) charity and publicly pleading for the US Department of Justice to open an investigation.

Brooks is president of the PPFFA, which represents more than 7,000 firefighters and first responders across the commonwealth, and is running for Congress against US Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Lehigh.)

Brooks’ allies are claiming that the Mackenzie and Republicans are using the commonwealth’s first memorial for fallen firefighters as a political prop ahead of the election.

“These are our brothers and sisters who gave their lives serving others. Some of our members knew the firefighters who will be honored there. Their families deserve respect, and their sacrifice deserves to be honored without being dragged into election politics. Have enough decency to keep our fallen firefighters out of it,” Lou Jimenez, president of Bethlehem Firefighters International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 735, said in a statement Tuesday.

Read more about Brooks here