Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is a piece of work. He was touted publicly on Vice President Kamala Harris's short list of running mates. He didn't make the cut. He then immediately canceled planned Harris campaign fundraisers in the Hamptons and took his marbles home. Yes, he mouthed his continued support for Harris, but his actions speak louder than all the phony political talking points in Pennsylvania. He was not a happy campaigner.
But is he now back? Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the presumptive nominee, has had a campaign launch as auspicious as the christening of the Titanic. Does Shapiro sense an opening? Harris wouldn't dump a candidate mocked for his policy as governor of putting women's health product dispensers in the boys' bathrooms of schools throughout the state, right?
The last time the Democrats dumped a VP candidate was when George McGovern dropped Missouri Sen. Tom Eagleton in 1972. He was a good man who had, at one point, been treated for mental health issues. After that gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight move, the Democrats only carried Massachusetts. Harris doesn't want to repeat that mistake. But could a stage-managed floor fight at the Democrat National Convention next week in Chicago achieve what Harris won't do herself? Right now, the wheels may already be turning in that direction as the Henry Higginses of the Democrat party work at turning their own version of Eliza Doolittle into presidential timber.
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman lobbied against Shapiro rather than supporting his quest for the VP spot. According to his team, Shapiro was all about Shapiro. His personal ambition was such that he would be a danger to the Harris campaign. This sounds like a spot-on assessment based on Shapiro's dubious use of the grand jury process to smear the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania to advance his personal ambition to become governor.
“A comprehensive investigation by the Office of Attorney General found widespread sexual abuse of children and a systemic coverup by leaders of the Catholic Church,” Shapiro claimed in a 900-page report he published in 2018. The sole purpose of a grand jury is to rule on whether someone should be indicted. Instead, Shapiro named 301 people he alleged were priests (some turned out not to be) engaged in sexual abuse. When all the headline-grabbing smoke cleared, Shapiro indicted two priests. Eleven priests named in the report sued over damage to their reputations. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in their favor. Since then, grand jury reports have been abolished in Pennsylvania. Such reports are not evidence of anything since no attempt is made to present the point of view of those named in the report. There is no cross-examination of witnesses, and no defense of reputation is allowed.
Even the liberal former New York Times religion reporter Peter Steinfels, writing in the equally liberal Commonweal Magazine, said of Shapiro's handiwork: "It’s Inaccurate, Unfair & Misleading." Pull quotes from his critique include: “ugly, indiscriminate, and inflammatory”; “to say nothing of the evidence the report ignores”; “truly unworthy of a judicial body."
As Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, put it:
Shapiro clearly has an animus toward the Catholic Church, one that is easy to prove. Why has he singled out the Catholic Church for past instances of sexual abuse, and no one else? Why hasn’t he investigated the public schools—no institution in the nation has had a bigger problem with the sexual abuse of minors than the public schools. In fact, Pennsylvania has a particularly bad record.
Why hasn’t Shapiro investigated coaches? Why hasn’t he investigated psychologists and psychiatrists? Why hasn’t he investigated therapists and counselors? Why hasn’t he investigated camp officials? Why hasn’t Shapiro investigated rabbis? Why hasn’t he investigated ministers? Why hasn’t he investigated imams? Why has Shapiro only investigated Catholic clergymen? This is where he is in big trouble: doing so is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Oddly enough, while Shapiro used the abuse crisis to climb the ladder to governor, last October, his office paid out $295,000 to settle a sexual harassment claim against "one of his most trusted senior aides" in the weeks before the aide quietly resigned. See no evil, hear no evil? Karma is a female canine, indeed.
Anti-Catholic bigotry is nothing new in Democrat politics. Kamala Harris is already on record attacking the Knights of Columbus. The Knights are the largest Catholic lay organization in the United States with over 2 million members in 16,000 local councils, which are mostly located in parish churches. In 2023, the Knights donated $185 million to charities and devoted 49 million hours to volunteer service. As a senator, Harris voted against three judicial nominees, Paul Matey, Peter Phipps, and Brian Buescher, specifically because they were Knights of Columbus:
Here is her questioning of Brian Buescher:
Since 1993, you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men. In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as “a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.” Mr. Anderson went on to say that “abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?
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To Phipps, she said, "Since 2011, you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization limited only to men. The Knights of Columbus state that they '[defend] the right to life of every human being, from the moment of conception to natural death.' As a member of this organization, do you carry out this mission?"
Yes, Kamala Harris is well-versed in the Catholics-need-not-apply logic of the bigot. Is she now prepared to double down on that if Josh Shapiro's name is floated for vice president at the Democrat National Convention?
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