Seated behind his desk in the Oval Office earlier this month, President Donald Trump spoke directly to the camera in front of him. He turned to his right and looked up at the Pennsylvania Republican who, as he had indicated just a few weeks earlier, might very well lose her race for governor this fall.
“I think you can win,” he said this time, extending his hand to Stacy Garrity. It was a change in tune for Trump, who last month at an event in Pennsylvania said Garrity’s opponent, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, was “expected to” and might win.
The president’s confidence in Garrity — and whether his support will extend beyond a handshake and a 17-second video with her at the White House — has become a critical question in the final stretch of the Pennsylvania governor’s race.
Down in the polls and lagging behind Shapiro’s unprecedented fundraising, Garrity has cultivated the president’s support and the potential boost, both financially and in Republican enthusiasm, that could come with it.
It is a risky strategy for a swing-state candidate whose party holds the White House, and particularly as polls show Trump becoming increasingly unpopular. Shapiro and his allies have enthusiastically promoted instances when Garrity, the twice-elected state treasurer, has leaned into Trump’s agenda and brand of politics.
But with less than three months before Election Day, it is not clear to what extent Trump or other key national Republicans will pitch in on her campaign.
Trump has not yet stumped in any significant way for Garrity in Pennsylvania, a swing state where he was a near-constant presence during his winning 2024 campaign. And he has not lent his vast political resources — including a Trump-aligned super PAC flush with $400 million — to Garrity or other Republican candidates as his party faces tough campaigns across the country in the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
Several gubernatorial races around the country are considered competitive, a reality that also pits Garrity against GOP nominees who polling suggests have better shots of success. The same circumstances have doomed the most recent other Trump-endorsed Pennsylvania Republican nominees for governor — former State Sen. Scott Wagner in 2018 and State Sen. Doug Mastriano in 2022 — who never ended up with national support and lost by double digits.
Campaigns typically heat up after Labor Day, and there is still time for Garrity’s national allies to converge to boost her. But observers say the political reality is also evident.
“The president kind of looks toward two things,” said Samuel Chen, an Allentown-based Republican strategist who is not affiliated with Garrity and who previously worked for Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania’s most recent GOP governor.
“One is loyalty to him. Garrity has been loyal, but has not necessarily been as vocal as some others have. The other side of it is he likes winners. He wants to endorse people who win,” Chen said. “Everyone in Trump’s orbit knows that Garrity has a very uphill climb.”
Not supporting ‘lost causes’?
The level of involvement from groups like the Republican Governors Association has been a key indicator of whether the party believes its nominee has a chance at winning recent gubernatorial elections in Pennsylvania.
The RGA is made up of GOP governors who collectively support one another’s agendas and campaigns. Democratic governors have a similar alliance.
In 2010 — the last time a Republican won the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg — the group was the largest donor to then-Attorney General Corbett’s gubernatorial campaign, giving him $6 million starting in August of that year. Four years later and helmed by then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the RGA was once again Corbett’s biggest donor. It donated more than $5.8 million as Corbett became the first sitting Pennsylvania governor in decades to lose a reelection bid. Christie, preparing to run for president in 2016, stumped with Corbett multiple times.
The picture was starkly different in 2018 and 2022, when Republican voters nominated two candidates closely associated with Trump. Neither Wagner’s campaign against Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf nor Mastriano’s campaign against Shapiro ever became highly competitive — and the RGA and other national groups decided to sit out.
“We’re watching Pennsylvania very closely,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, then the chair of the RGA, said in September 2022. He added that the group would not support “lost causes” or “landslides.”
The RGA would spend nothing in the state that year, even with Mastriano and former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis pleading for assistance. Shapiro went on to trounce Mastriano by nearly 15 percentage points.
This year, RGA chair and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has not publicly weighed in on Garrity’s chances since issuing a brief, generic statement congratulating her after her unchallenged primary in May.
And the competitive landscape Republicans are facing across the country may mean Pennsylvania’s GOP nominee once again gets the short end of the stick. The RGA did not respond to requests for comment.
Even with Pennsylvania’s status as a preeminent swing state that went for Trump two years ago, there are nearly a dozen more competitive gubernatorial races across the country this fall, according to the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan group that provides election analysis.
Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin — some of which voted overwhelmingly for Trump just two years ago — are all considered toss-ups. Four other states with Democratic governors — Oregon, Arizona, Michigan, and Kansas — are also considered more competitive than Pennsylvania, which is ranked as “solid Democratic,” according to Cook, despite Republicans like Garrity and Trump having won statewide two years ago.
The RGA, according to its most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission, had less than $1.7 million in its RGA Right Direction super PAC after spending about $16 million so far in the current election cycle.
Its recent spending has focused on Iowa, where Democrats are attempting to capture the governor’s office for the first time in two decades, and Kansas, where the RGA launched an ad this month.
“There’s always competition for limited resources,” Charlie Gerow, a longtime Harrisburg-based Republican strategist who also ran for governor in 2022, said of the intraparty competition for donors. “There’s only so much campaign funding to go around as everybody’s trying to get a piece of it.”
Trump hosted a fundraiser for Garrity in March at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He has also visited Pennsylvania twice this summer, though not for events specifically with Garrity — and in one in case he did not mention her among a list of candidates he was supporting.
In July, Shapiro’s campaign announced he had raised $50 million since January 2025. The next financial filing deadline for statewide candidates is in September, but as of the last reporting cycle, he had outraised Garrity 10-1.
But Matthew Beynon, a spokesperson for Garrity’s campaign, said she “does not expect, nor does she need, to go dollar-for-dollar with Josh Shapiro.” Instead, he said, she “just needs the resources to prosecute her case against Josh Shapiro … and she is on pace to be able to do so.”
Garrity looks forward to “continued support” from the RGA, he said.
Other national attention on Pennsylvania
After Mastriano’s disastrous performance in 2022, Republicans coalesced around Garrity — whose 3.5 million votes in 2024 were the most ever for a statewide candidate in Pennsylvania — as their best shot at defeating Shapiro.
But in the year since she received the party’s endorsement, Garrity has barely moved the needle. A Quinnipiac University poll in July found Shapiro leading Garrity 53% to 40% among registered Pennsylvania voters. Trump saw even lower scores: Just 39% of those polled approved of the president’s job performance.
A poll from a Republican-leaning firm promoted by Garrity showed her down, 50% to 43%.
Across Pennsylvania, she has also competed for attention and resources as her party prioritizes other major election battles this fall.
Four Republican-held congressional districts — based in Bucks County, the Lehigh Valley, Scranton, and Harrisburg — are seeing a rush of national attention and money as their outcomes could decide control of the narrowly divided U.S. House.
Shapiro has also invested heavily in trying to flip the state Senate to Democratic control for the first time in three decades, putting Republicans further on their heels. The $3.3 million that Shapiro committed to the effort is more than Garrity has raised in her entire campaign.
On the other side of the aisle, Pennsylvania’s top elected Republican — U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick — has endorsed Garrity but has not appeared to join in her public campaign efforts so far. A Trump ally and former hedge fund leader, McCormick has raised millions since his election in 2024, and political action committees associated with him have donated to other PACs working to elect Pennsylvania Republicans in Congress.
McCormick has hosted events and campaigned for Garrity, and he “will keep doing everything he can to help her win,” said Mike DeVanney, a spokesperson for the senator.
“He believes she demonstrates the kind of leadership we need and the kind that President Trump and many others have recognized as one that can move our commonwealth forward,” DeVanney said.
Gerow said McCormick undoubtedly could help Garrity down the stretch.
“He’s a prolific fundraiser. He has the connections, and he has the personality to raise large amounts of money. And he can be very, very helpful with the Garrity campaign if he weighs in with full weight,” Gerow said.
Garrity’s campaign said McCormick has been an “incredible supporter,” including with his early endorsement and connections to supporters.
Shapiro has also cultivated across-the-aisle relationships with some Pennsylvania Republicans who would be expected to promote Garrity.
In an April interview with Punchbowl News, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Bucks County Republican running for reelection in the nationally watched 1st Congressional District, said he thought Shapiro would win his reelection contest and should run for president, adding: “I think Josh is very, very smart.”
And during his 2022 run, Shapiro collected endorsements from other prominent Republicans, including Jim Schultz, a former Trump White House lawyer, and former Republican U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent.
The final stretch
Though the November election is less than three months away, that is still plenty of time in politics. Most ad spending does not start until September, and ground game efforts — door knocking, phone banking, and get-out-the-vote campaigns — get underway in the fall.
Winning Pennsylvania is a priority for Trump in the midterms, and Garrity’s campaign said she is “grateful” for his continued support.
On the state level, James Markley, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania GOP, said the party is “fully invested” in helping Garrity beat Shapiro. Those efforts include training “thousands” of volunteers and working on education programs around early voting and casting mail-in ballots.
“The more Pennsylvania voters learn about Stacy Garrity, the more they love her,” he said in a statement. “The more Pennsylvania voters learn about Josh Shapiro, they realize he has no record to stand on.”
Gerow said Garrity’s challenge, with limited funds compared with Shapiro, is whether she has enough money to get her message out.
“The major concern for her immediately is to be able to tell her story,” Gerow said. “She doesn’t have the resources to tell that story effectively right now, and she has a great story.”
Throughout her campaign, Garrity has hammered Shapiro on several issues she said reveal his lack of transparency as a public official. She has held roundtable discussions blasting Shapiro for his early embrace of data centers, a position he has since distanced himself from after calling for new guidelines for their development. Her campaign released a video series online that questions his handling of criminal investigations. And she has repeatedly insisted that Shapiro, who is widely rumored to be running for president in 2028, is “more interested in Pennsylvania Avenue than helping Pennsylvania families.”
Samantha Reposa, a spokesperson for Shapiro’s campaign, disputed Garrity’s framing and emphasized that she has stood in lockstep with Trump on most of his positions.
“Garrity is now running to be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Trump and his agenda that’s hurting Pennsylvania families — and we will continue to hold her accountable,” Reposa said.
A new ad from Shapiro’s campaign paints her as “100% MAGA,” highlighting her support for Trump’s tariffs.
Given Garrity’s fundraising deficit, Chen said, he would advise her to focus on meeting individual people in the community, if he were running her campaign.
“Forget the GOP dinners. Start going to fairs. Start going to places that Republicans don’t show up. Start retail politics, and start introducing yourself to the state outside of Donald Trump, outside of modern Republicanism,” he said. “Tell the state what you’ve done for them and what you would do differently [as governor].”
Staff writer Joe Yerardi contributed to this article.
