Shapiro breaks with Wolf, fellow Dems on COVID policies in governor race

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/08/shapiro-breaks-with-wolf-fellow-dems-on-covid-policies-in-governor-race.html

As attorney general, Josh Shapiro went to court repeatedly to defend Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration against legal challenges to his pandemic-era mandates and shutdowns.

Now, as he’s running to succeed Wolf as governor, Shapiro says he is against some of the same COVID-19 containment measures that his fellow Democrat used to help manage the nation’s worst pandemic in over a century.

On the campaign trail in the presidential battleground state, Shapiro’s Republican opponent, Doug Mastriano, makes Wolf’s COVID-19 policies — and Shapiro’s defense of them in court — a source of derision.

But disavowing Wolf’s COVID-19 policies while facing headwinds for his party may be a politically painless way for Shapiro to tack to the middle against Mastriano, who even some top Republicans say is too far to the right to win the November general election.

“This is an area where I think folks got it wrong,” Shapiro said of school and business shutdowns. On mask and vaccine mandates, Shapiro said he opposed them and instead talked about a need to “educate and empower” the public, business owners, school leaders and others to protect themselves and others.

“And to me, that’s the approach we need to take more broadly as a public, which is to educate, empower and respect people’s personal decisions and respect their personal freedom to make those choices,” Shapiro told The Associated Press in an interview.

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