Scott Wagner’s daughter once accused him of being violent, now defends him

(York) — In 2006, Scott Wagner’s oldest daughter applied for a protection-from-abuse order against him. Nearly 12 years later, that order is coming up as Scott Wagner runs for governor.

In a new TV ad, Scott Wagner’s oldest daughter, Katharine Wagner, defends her father. “Paul Mango is a disgrace. …Dragging me into his dirty campaign is beyond the bounds of decency,” Katharine Wagner says in the TV ad.

She speaks directly into the camera with a black background behind her.

“My dad is a wonderful father who has always supported me. Mango is taking a decade-old dispute and twisting the truth,” Katharine Wagner said.

Which “decade-old dispute” she refers to is unclear in the ad itself. 

In a recent TV ad, the Mango campaign called Wagner a “deadbeat dad” over a case involving Wagner’s other daughter. That dispute over child support and temporary alimony began in 2008 and dragged on in court for years.

But the PFA has also emerged in the campaign.

The Mango ad also called Wagner “violent.” But the footage used was from a separate dispute between Wagner and a campaign tracker in 2017 — not the PFA issue.

Still, during a news conference Tuesday, Wagner suggested the Mango campaign would focus on that PFA issue.

“Listen, there’s big talk out there about an issue with my oldest daughter, you know, almost 12 years ago. I was, I tried to save my daughter’s life. That’s what this is all about,” Wagner said. “And Mr. Mango wants to go after my daughter, he’s going after the wrong person’s daughter, trust me.”

After that news conference, Mango campaign spokesman Matthew Beynon said, “First, we’ve never brought up his daughter. The protection from abuse order granted to his daughter is between him, his daughter and the law. However, Mr. Wagner does have a long violent, insulting, bullying past and it is not just one incident.” 

The PFA case goes back to 2006.

At the time, Katharine Wagner alleged that her father confronted her over photos of her drinking. She alleged that he put his hands around her neck, squeezed and shook her to the point where she was having trouble breathing.

She also alleged that when Scott Wagner let go of her neck, he quickly grabbed both of her wrists, holding them together and pushing her up against a kitchen counter. She said in the petition that her back was hurt because of that, and she missed two days of work.

The 2006 case was dismissed when she failed to appear for a hearing.

She and Scott Wagner discussed the issue in 2013 with reporters, back when he first ran for state Senate.

“All I’ll say is, at the time, I was making some poor decisions,” she said. “And I have a child of my own now, and I can understand why it reached the level it did.”

Meanwhile, during the 2013 interview, Wagner said his daughter had been in an accident before the confrontation that led to the PFA case. He showed reporters a picture of her from that time, which he described as her on a ventilator and “fighting for her life.”

Scott Wagner said she was released a couple of days later and was staying at her grandparents’ home.

“I went over and tried to encourage her to seek some counseling. …We got into a heated argument,” he said.

He disputed details in the protection from abuse petition, but during the 2013 interview, he declined to recount in detail what happened that evening.

“It was a very heated argument. … Yeah, there was touching involved. But … some of the touching involved is inaccurate,” he said.

The PFA issue has come up in this governor’s race.The Associated Press reported that Katharine Wagner sent a letter to state committee members in November, saying that her father did not choke her.

“My father did what any parent would do to save their child’s life,” she wrote in the letter, according to The Associated Press. “And I reacted like an angry teenager by filing a PFA against my father — an act that I deeply regret to this day.”

Wagner went on to receive the endorsement from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.

Wagner campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said the new TV ad featuring Katharine Wagner was a direct response to Mango’s “false, cartoon attack ad slandering Scott Wagner’s character and attacking him as a father.” The Mango campaign has defended the ad and said it provided documentation to back up its statements.

Katharine Wagner was not the daughter mentioned in the child support claim, but Romeo said she “still was offended by the suggestion that Scott is a ‘dead beat dad’ and the attacks on her family as a whole.”

A third Republican candidate for governor, Laura Ellsworth, has criticized the negative ads between Wagner and Mango.

The primary is May 15.

This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The York Daily Record.