Shapiro’s Brand Is High Gloss and High Cost
Christopher Nicholas /
RealClearWire—Pennsylvania’s “Get Stuff Done” governor has a favorite state department that he’s willing to staff to the rafters: his personal, dedicated PR team.
As published reports last summer detailed, Gov. Josh Shapiro now sports 21 employees in his Executive Office, “dedicated to promoting” his image. But earlier this month, in response to an official Right to Know request, Shapiro’s administration contended that he had never surfed the web on a state-owned device.
So, all his social media posting—is it done exclusively by staff? Or all on Shapiro’s personal phone?
Shapiro’s 21 PR folks must be terribly busy, making sure all his social media postings—and all his surfing—are safely done exclusively on his personal devices. To put those staffers in perspective, that’s a larger headcount than many of the offices actually tasked with the heavy lifting of governing: helping Pennsylvanians.
While the Commonwealth is staring down a structural deficit and still recovering from last year’s 135-day budget stalemate that left our schools and social service agencies in the lurch, the governor was busy building a taxpayer-funded media empire.
In Harrisburg, as in most state capitals, personnel is policy. And Shapiro’s personnel choices tell you everything you need to know about his priorities.
Take a look at the strike teams that Shapiro claims are transforming the Commonwealth. The Office of Transformation and Opportunity—his supposed one-stop shop for cutting red tape—is a lean operation of about a dozen staffers. The state Board of Pardons, chaired by the lieutenant governor, which oversees the complex legal work of clemency, gets by with roughly 14 employees. Even the Office of Health Equity, supposed to be a lifeline for the most vulnerable in the state’s 67 counties, survives on a small, skeleton crew.
But when it comes to the guts of “Get Stuff Done,” Shapiro’s Department of Self-Promotion, the taxpayers’ checkbook is wide open. Shapiro has more people writing his tweets and staging his “impromptu” press conferences than he has experts fixing the permitting backlogs that he campaigned on ameliorating.
Priorities?
For those of us who have watched Shapiro’s climb from state representative to Montgomery County Commissioner to the attorney general’s office, this is not a surprise—it’s his playbook. A recent, lengthy profile in The Atlantic noted that “Even those who detest the governor acknowledge that he is a master operator…”
It’s true: Shapiro has always been a master of the earned media cycle, using taxpayer resources to package his nearly every move into viral clips. Team Shapiro goes out of its way to show how hip he is by making sure his regular meet-and-greets with his fellow influencers get covered in the mainstream media.
And remember that while the Office of Open Records—the very entity that helps citizens trying to see how their money is being spent—is drowning in a record-high volume of appeals with a staff of 19, the governor’s second-floor Capitol “war room” is perfectly staffed to spin the narrative of the day. It’s a hall of mirrors funded by citizens’ 3.07% PIT.
As we look toward the in-process 2026-27 budget, the optics are troubling. Every dollar spent on a Regional Outreach Deputy or a Digital Content Producer is a dollar that isn’t putting a state trooper on patrol or fixing a pothole. We are witness to a taxpayer-funded campaign operation being run out of the Governor’s Office under the guise of public information.
Does Pennsylvania need a governor who requires 21 PR staffers to convince us he’s working? No. We need a governor who spends more time working for us and less time posing for selfies and cosplaying as an influencer.
The Shapiro brand is high-gloss, high-cost, and increasingly hollow. When the PR staff outnumbers the policy experts in critical units, the transformation we were promised looks like nothing more than a fresh coat of paint on a crumbling foundation.
Pennsylvanians deserve a governor determined to serve the people, not one more focused on a 2028 presidential campaign.
This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania and made available via RealClearWire.
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