Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has never explicitly said he is interested in running for president.

He has not ruled it out either.

The former state attorney general on Tuesday night won the Democratic Party’s nomination for a second term, the first step toward a victory in November, when he is the clear favorite according to recent polling and projections from major forecasters. For Shapiro, a battleground-state victory, particularly by sizable margins, could prove to be a compelling opening argument for a 2028 presidential bid. 

“The bottom line is Pennsylvania is the ultimate swing state,” said Adrienne Elrod, a Democratic strategist who worked on former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign. “The fact that he has been able to be a really strong, bipartisan, effective governor in that state says a lot about his capabilities.”

A Susquehanna Polling & Research survey in mid-March found Shapiro leading his GOP opponent, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, by a 22-point margin. He had near-total backing from Democrats, undecided voters leaned in his direction and he even won the support of 18% of Republicans. 

Berwood Yost, a longtime pollster at Franklin & Marshall College, noted that Shapiro is the most popular governor in Pennsylvania in more than two decades, though incumbents in the state routinely win re-election, sometimes by double digits.

For now, the governor says he is focused on his re-election bid, boosting Democrats in competitive House races and achieving a rare “trifecta” of Democratic control of state government. Republicans have controlled Pennsylvania’s state Senate since 1994, making a Democratic sweep of the statehouse a tall order. Even so, some political observers believe Democrats have a chance to flip the chamber this year.

If Democrats flip the Senate, it could add “a layer of credibility to his candidacy should he run” for president, Yost said. “That’s a real credential that might make people think: ‘Well, look, this is a person who can win in the kind of places where we need to win,’” he said, citing the purple, Trump-Biden-Trump states of Wisconsin and Michigan. “People also like winners.”

Shapiro would still have to overcome significant hurdles to win the Democratic presidential nomination, such as having low national name recognition and pressure from the party’s progressive wing. He remains in the single digits in most early polls of Democratic voters in a hypothetical 2028 primary field.

In 2028, “Shapiro would be a very strong general election candidate for the Democrats,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican who endorsed Shapiro in 2022. “His challenge will be the primary.”

Although he has avoided labels, Shapiro is widely considered a centrist. Criticism lobbed against him from progressives during his brief stint on Harris’ vice-presidential shortlist could resurface if he made a national campaign — including his support for Israel and for private-school vouchers.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told MS NOW that Democratic voters are looking for “an outsider moment” in the next presidential race, pointing to the surging candidacies of figures including James Talarico in Texas and Graham Platner in Maine.

“I don’t know what the Josh Shapiro story is,” said Green. “It doesn’t seem like having five years in the governorship and then beginning from square one to tell a story to a national audience is lined up for success.”

Shapiro’s allies counter that his communications skills, approval ratings and his executive experience set him apart from a field heavy on legislators. They also say he is agile in front of reporters and in the face of tough questions.

Shapiro would also have to court prominent donors and secure endorsements in what is likely to be a crowded field. Over the years, prominent billionaire donors, including former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman — have given to his state campaigns.

According to a campaign official who was granted anonymity to discuss finances, Shapiro had $37 million cash on hand as of May 4, far outraising his Republican opponent.

But according to one operative who has worked in Democratic politics both inside and outside Pennsylvania and requested anonymity to speak candidly, Shapiro “has very few national political allies outside of those who he has to work with inside the state.”

One Democrat whose endorsement could prove pivotal in a 2028 primary is Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who sat for a conversation with Shapiro in December about his new book on trailblazing Black lawmakers in Philadelphia.

“He’s a talented guy. I think he demonstrated strength in campaigning that everybody will need to run a national campaign,” Clyburn told MS NOW. “I’ll wait to see until we get 2026 in the rearview mirror. Then I’ll start thinking about who will be good for the future of the country.”

In a familiar tell of a politician weighing a presidential run, Shapiro released a memoir earlier this year, surveying his career in public office. He has also sharply and consistently criticized Vice President JD Vance — who has likewise left the door open to running in 2028 — on the administration’s economic policies, among other matters.

Despite his criticisms of President Donald Trump’s actions in office, Shapiro was named to a bipartisan council of governors advising the administration on natural disaster response and other issues. Along with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, he also signed onto an agreement to target electricity price hikes as a result of artificial intelligence data centers.

At the National Action Network convention in April, Shapiro said he wants “to be a part” of the Democratic Party’s conversation about rebuilding the country after Trump leaves office. (The founder of NAN, Rev. Al Sharpton, is the anchor of MS NOW’s “Politics Nation.”) Ashley Sharpton, who is Rev. Sharpton’s daughter and serves as the youth director of NAN, told MS NOW Shapiro is among her top three choices for the presidential nomination; the other two are Harris and Moore.

In an interview Tuesday with MS NOW, she praised his “GSD” mantra — short for “get stuff done” — along with the back-and-forth he engaged in with the audience at the convention.

Shapiro has “already started appealing to Black voters,” Ashley Sharpton said, citing his stance on protecting voting rights; diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and his ties to the Baptist church (even though he is devoutly Jewish). California Gov. Gavin “Newsom didn’t even show up” to the NAN convention, she said.

The governor’s perceived national ambitions have become a political liability, one Garrity has begun to highlight on the stump. Christopher Nicholas, a Pennsylvania-based Republican consultant, expects the race to tighten as Election Day nears.

“It’s not so much that people think he’s going to run [for president] and win and leave,” Nicholas said, but rather that if he does, “he’s still not in Pennsylvania being governor, which is the job people are paying him to do.”

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