On any given day, you’re likely to find two-time PA Treasurer Stacy Garrity driving across the Commonwealth.

Garrity is strolling through county fairs, showing up at pizza shops, throwing out the first pitch at minor league baseball games and, at all these venues and more, tabling to help Pennsylvanians get back money and objects the state owes them. With big eyes and big hair — curled bangs and a feathered, strawberry blonde blowout — she looks like Jacki Weaver (who played the mother of Bradley Cooper’s character) in Silver Linings Playbook. (Although her Facebook points out her resemblance to Sally Struthers of All In the Family.) She seems genuinely happy to be … wherever she is.

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Garrity smiles, shakes hands, and heads off to the next event. In her first term as Treasurer, she visited every PA county, every year.

Elizabeth Preate Havey, Secretary of the Republican Party of PA and former head of the Montgomery County Republican Party, remembers the Treasurer coming to her organization’s annual picnic to speak — and receiving a standing ovation. Afterwards, picnickers crowded around to meet her. “That’s the kind of politician that she is,” Havey says.

State-crossing, baseball-throwing, barbecue-attending politics is nonstandard for a treasurer, a role that’s more about numbers and less about retail politicking. But Garrity has stayed as visible in her role as she did during her campaigns, and, for months, PA Republicans have been buzzing about her next step. Turns out, it’s a big one: In mid-August, she declared her intention to become PA’s 49th governor. To do this, she’d need to unseat popular incumbent, Democratic rising star and rumored presidential hopeful Josh Shapiro.

“She understands the issues for people from Butler County or Beaver County are different than those that are in Philadelphia.” — Elizabeth Preate Havey, Republican Party of PA

It’s a big ambition for Garrity, who, prior to her current role, had no political experience. Even bigger considering the last woman to hold the governor’s role was Hannah Callowhill Penn, who took over from her ailing husband William in 1712.

But history and Shapiro aren’t Garrity’s only obstacles. Garrity may have shaken more hands than most, but she’s still left observers wondering who she is. Is she the MAGA loyalist who appeared onstage alongside Donald Trump and declared him the winner of the 2020 election? Or, is she the coalition builder who’s reached across the aisle to get things done in Harrisburg? Bipartisan or DeSantis-esque? And, in ever-purple PA, is it possible to be both — and win?

Who is Stacy Garrity?

Garrity grew up in Athens, PA, population 3,227, close to the state’s border with New York, near the Susquehanna and Chemung rivers. She attended Sayre Area High School before graduating from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. “I love her background,” Havey says. “She understands the issues for people from Butler County or Beaver County are different than those that are in Philadelphia.”

Via a campaign spokesperson, Garrity declined to participate in an interview for this story; she did offer to answer questions via email, which The Citizen declined.

After college, Garrity enlisted in the United States Army Reserves and served 30 years in non-combat roles. She deployed three times during the Gulf and Iraq wars. At Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run detention center in southern Iraq, she handled detainee processing, managed detainee family visitations and interpreters, and worked closely with the Red Cross. A colleague and legal liaison for the Geneva Conventions called Garrity the “angel of the desert” for her compassion and ability to solve problems: supporting orphanages, securing soccer balls and board games, setting up a post office for detainees.

Nonetheless, problems plagued the camp. As NPR reported in 2004, a group of soldiers kicked and stomped detainees arriving at the camp; Garrity reported the incident, and four soldiers were discharged. By the time she retired from the military, she’d earned the rank of Colonel.

Back in PA, Garrity returned to her job at Global Tungsten & Powders Corp., a global supplier of refractory powders in Towanda, Bradford County, where she became a VP and worked in government affairs, successfully lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that bans the Department of Defense from purchasing tungsten products from Iran, China, North Korea and Russia.

Garrity’s background — small town, military service, chemicals, government affairs — made her great on paper for PA’s Republican Party, and, in 2020, she launched a longshot bid against incumbent Democrat Joe Torsella to become treasurer. But first, she consulted a hometown prayer chain, a group of people who commit to pray for one another and share prayer requests. She won the primary unopposed.

During the campaign, third-party candidates for Treasurer praised Torsella, but Garrity questioned the incumbent’s commitment. “We have these row officers that want to run for something else,” she said at the time. “My only ambition is to serve.” She blamed Torsella’s lack of focus for the identity theft and fraud that targeted the state’s unemployment assistance program during the pandemic.

Compared to her opponent, Garrity’s pockets were shallow. Her campaign’s coffers contained all of $217,000. Torsella’s campaign spent $1.8 million. “Nobody thought she was going to win the first time — nobody — including me,” Havey says.

But something strange happened on the way to Joe Biden’s presidential victory in PA: Republicans who voted for Biden seemed to show party loyalty by voting for Republicans in down-ballot races. Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor won his race, and so did Garrity — by 52,546 votes.

Treasurer Stacy Garrity

As Treasurer, Garrity instantly became responsible for managing $170 billion in Commonwealth assets. PA’s Treasurer sits on the board of the state’s two pension funds, Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) and the State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS) and manages both the disability savings program, PA ABLE, and the college savings programs PA 529 College and Career Savings and Keystone Scholars.

As promised, Garrity continued Torsella’s work and upgraded the Treasury’s Transparency Portal, giving citizens more access to state spending and budget details, and made returning unclaimed property — more than $1 billion in paychecks, dormant bank account funds, military decorations and the contents of abandoned safe deposit boxes.

“She’s really shown that she can run a tight and efficient ship,” Havey says.

Garrity also worked across the aisle, including by keeping Torsella’s staff members in place, including Hugh Allen, who served as her first chief of staff. Garrity also helped lead efforts to reform PSERS, which faced a federal investigation over exaggerated investment returns and secretive land deals.

To do this, she worked with Torsella himself, who remained on the PSERS board as an appointee of Governor Tom Wolf. Together, they filed a friend of the court brief in Commonwealth Court in support of a lawsuit by Democratic State Senator Katie Muth to obtain investment contracts, real estate documents and other information related to the management of PSERS.

“She was one of the [people] that brought forward the idea that we should be more judicious with the Commonwealth’s money, and with the pension funds money and that we should find ways to to reduce fees,” says Richard Vague, a venture capitalist who has worked with Garrity in his role as chair of the Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) board. [Editor’s note: Richard Vague is a supporter of The Citizen.]

Combine her accomplishments with her public presence and retail politics — plus a boost from Trump at the top of the ticket and a weak opponent in Democrat Erin McClelland (whom even Shapiro didn’t endorse), and, in the 2024 general election, Garrity received the most votes of any politician in state history. Shapiro, the previous record-holder for most votes in PA, spoke at her second inauguration.

Bipartisanship … or working with the enemy?

In other eras, Garrity’s down-home, stronger together ethos wouldn’t make waves. After all, PA is still a deeply purple state. As recently as last year, a poll showed Shapiro enjoyed a 35 percent approval rating among then-likely Trump voters. Look at SEPTA, or even the current budget fiasco, and there’s your proof that Harrisburg requires bipartisanship to get things done.

But 2025 isn’t 2024, and Garrity’s cross-aisle-reaching might end up a problem in the primary — especially if she faces someone like farther-right state Senator Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist and January 6-er who ran (and lost) against Shapiro in 2022. Mastriano has been suggesting he’d like a rematch.

“This is going to be an attack against Garrity: Why do you work so well with Democrats?” says Samuel S. Chen, principal director of the Allentown-based political strategy firm The Liddell Group and a Never Trump Republican who worked for Republicans U.S. Senator Pat Toomey and former PA Governor Tom Corbett. “She’s going to get hit by the party — not the official party — but by voters, for this.”

Chen believes in this moment in PA, in a race of medium MAGA versus ultra MAGA, the latter wins. “The Republican Party is Donald Trump’s party,” he says. “That’s going to be a test every time: How close to the President and the President’s ideas and policies are candidates going to get?”

But how MAGA is Garrity? That’s actually hard to tell, too. She has publicly praised the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and expressed support for H.R.1, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Trump features prominently on her campaign website and social media.

Going farther back, she has, on more than one public occasion, revealed her MAGA bona fides by claiming Trump won the 2020 election (reminder: he lost). The first time, on January 5, 2021, in Harrisburg — the day before the insurrection at the Capitol — she stepped onstage during the “Hear Us Roar” protest on the state capitol steps and said, “The election from this November is tarnished forever.” Also at the protest: Mastriano, whose campaign, the next day, chartered buses to Washington, D.C.

The second time was a 2022 rally for then-U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. Standing alongside Trump, Garrity thanked the former President for his support and, pointing to the then-former President, said, “We know that he won.” (Here’s the video.)

Last year, when she was up for reelection, Garrity’s campaign did a 180. Spokesperson Jim Tkacik told the Pennsylvania Capital Star that in that January 5, 2021 appearance, his boss was referring to the state Senate race in the 45th District, not the general election. Tkacik declined to address the 2022 comment, saying Garrity believes Biden won the 2020 election. Which puts her in an odd spot.

“In the world of Donald Trump, if you don’t win, you’re a loser.” — Larry Ceisler, Ceisler Media

“She has this very unenviable position of trying to walk that line. If she goes too hard on it being a fair election, she’ll struggle to win the primary. If she goes too hard on it being an unfair election, then she’ll struggle to win the general,” says Chen.

Unenviable, maybe, but it’s fairly clear the Republican Party believes Garrity is their best option — not just for the job she’s seeking, but also because the party needs a strong candidate at the top of next year’s ticket to help hold on to the four congressional seats Democrats have been hoping to take back.

Many PA Republicans are pushing for a quick primary endorsement to strengthen her presence by next November. She came out swinging against Shapiro in her campaign announcement, attacking the sitting Governor on quality of life issues like high taxes and food costs, and accusing him of seeking favor from liberal donors in states like California.

Pennsylvania: where powerful women almost get elected

But then, there’s that … woman thing. While New Jersey could be on the verge of electing its second woman as governor, PA is one of 18 states that have never done so. (Callowhill Penn wasn’t elected: She essentially inherited the role after her husband’s strokes and ensuing death.) We’re also one of 17 states who’ve never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate. PA didn’t send a woman to Congress until 1992, with Democrat Marjorie Margolies.

What does it say about PA that our top three political jobs (governor, two U.S. Senators) have pretty much always been held by White men? A number of promising PA women have run, but both political parties have abandoned them when they lost. That’s what happened to Republican Barabara Hafer and Democrats Lynn Yeakel and Allyson Schwartz.

In 1990, Hafer, then the state’s Auditor General, lost her bid for governor to incumbent Bob Casey Sr. by 36 percentage points. The next gubernatorial primary, the Republican Party sidelined her in favor of then-PA Attorney General Mike Fisher, who lost nonetheless. (Hafer would go on to serve as Treasurer, however, from 1997 to 2005.)

Yeakel lost her bid to oust Republican incumbent Arlen Specter to become PA’s first woman U.S. Senator; two years later, she came in fourth in the gubernatorial primary. Schwartz, who prominently represented Montgomery County and parts of Northeast Philly in the U.S. House of Representatives, exited politics entirely after losing the U.S. Senate primary in 2000 and the gubernatorial primary in 2014.

Other PA women elected to high offices met even worse fates. Catherine Baker Knoll was PA’s first and only female Lieutenant Governor, serving under Ed Rendell from 2003 to 2008, when she died in office. Kathleen Kane was PA’s first and only woman Attorney General from 2013 to 2016, when she was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and more federal charges, and resigned.

If Garrity loses, what would that do to her political ambitions? Will she be another woman who gets sidelined? Since a PA Treasurer can serve only two consecutive terms, she would be out of office in 2028 — and, today more than ever, out of luck. “In the world of Donald Trump, if you don’t win, you’re a loser,” says public affairs executive Larry Ceisler.

Berwood A. Yost, director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy and Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College goes a step further, suggesting Garrity should reconsider running to begin with. “The upside if you win is significant, but what does it do to your future ambitions, if you lose?” he says. “If you’re someone like Stacy Garrity, would it be strategically wise to sit this one out, and maybe wait till 2030, when there will certainly not be an incumbent?”

A show no matter what

No matter what, if she wins the primary, Garrity faces a difficult contest against Shapiro. The sitting Governor has a 61 percent approval rating and, as of late last year, more than $11 million cash-on-hand. Across both of her treasurer races, Garrity raised $3.7 million. And, despite her high-turnout reelection victory, she’s never campaigned against such a formidable opponent: Shapiro has never lost an election.

Already the race is heated, and influential power brokers are staking their positions. As a gubernatorial candidate, Garrity has lost support that was arguably vital to her treasurer races. The powerful unions that were behind her then are throwing their weight behind Shapiro. In a statement, Philadelphia Building Trades leader Ryan Boyer quipped that should Garrity “make the foolish decision to challenge our Governor, she will never again have the support of the Philadelphia Building Trades. Not even for county dog catcher.”

Garrity has won tough races before. If the PA Republican Party is right that Mastriano is too MAGA to win, she’s their best chance. Either way, a contest between Garrity and Shapiro, Harrisburg’s two most prominent politicians, in the state that is the undisputed bellwether of national politics, could very well be, says Chen, “the showdown of the century.”

Corrections: Under Garrity, the PA Treasury has returned more than $1 billion in property and money to PA residents. Global Tungsten & Powders Corp., Garrity’s former employer, is located in Bradford County.

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