Josh Shapiro secures support from Boilermakers union that has scalded Democrats before

• Chris Potter/WESA
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  Nearly three decades after leaving home for college, Chris Potter now lives four miles from the house he grew up in -- a testament either to the charm of the South Hills or to a simple lack of ambition. In the intervening years, Potter held a variety of jobs, including asbestos abatement engineer and ice-cream truck driver. He has also worked for a number of local media outlets, only some of which then went out of business. After serving as the editor of Pittsburgh City Paper for a decade, he covered politics and government at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has won some awards during the course of his quarter-century journalistic career, but then even a blind squirrel sometimes digs up an acorn.

 Cory Sharber / WHYY

Pa. Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro criticized his opponent's stance on labor unions during a campaign stop on Aug. 18, 2022.

Usually, a Democrat getting an endorsement from a labor union is a “dog-bites-man story.” But when gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro scooped up the backing of Boilermakers Local 154 Thursday in Pittsburgh, it was a sign of how he has avoided political landmines that have derailed other Democrats.

“Josh is committed to protecting workers, supporting energy and growing our economy,” said the union’s business manager, Mike Stanton, in a statement announcing the endorsement.

Local 154 has famously been willing to part from the union fold in the past. It previously endorsed Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, for example. And the union didn’t just endorse Donald Trump over Joe Biden in 2020: An officer in the local unleashed a blistering ad that said he was “sick and tired of being taken for granted. … Joe Biden, he’s a disaster.”

Many of the local’s 1,500 members work in the fossil-fuel sector, and they’ve been especially critical of Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to enter into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a “cap-and-trade” program that uses credits to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

That opposition played a part in the union backing Carrie DelRosso for a successful 2020 state House bid to topple the Democrats’ then-leader, Frank Dermody. DelRosso is running this year for lieutenant governor — as the running mate for Shapiro’s foe, Republican Doug Mastriano.

Shapiro has long expressed doubts about the Wolf initiative, even as lawyers in the attorney general’s office, which he heads, said it passed legal muster. Shapiro has said the initiative could harm the state’s energy sector while making little headway on climate change. And he has pledged repeatedly — including during a brief interview with WESA last month at Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade — that as governor he would convene stakeholders at the outset of his administration to review the state’s energy policy.

“We will grow our economy and embrace Pennsylvania’s role as an energy powerhouse to project the energy jobs of today while … creating the energy jobs of tomorrow,” Shapiro said Thursday in a statement announcing the endorsement.

“We feel confident that Josh will embrace our concerns, and he has promised us a seat at the table when it comes to energy in Pennsylvania,” said Stanton.

The endorsement Thursday comes nearly a year after Shapiro first reportedly discussed the regional initiative with the union as he was launching his campaign.

The Boilermakers also praised Shapiro as a supporter of labor causes generally, including a case involving alleged pension theft prosecuted by the attorney general’s office under his watch. Mastriano also has been an ardent foe of some causes dear to unions, such as a state prevailing-wage law that helps union contractors compete for taxpayer-funded jobs.

For Mastriano, the Boilermakers’ endorsement is a lost opportunity to connect with voters outside a deeply conservative base. Shapiro has previously locked up the support of other unions that have a track record of backing Republicans, including locals with the Fraternal Order of Police that split their statewide endorsements by supporting Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz for U.S. Senate.

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