News & Brews September 23, 2026
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Shapiro spent >$31M in latest campaign report
The latest campaign finance reports were due yesterday, covering from June 9 through September 14. In that time period, Gov. Shapiro’s campaign raised a hefty $14 million-plus (including in-kind contributions), but what’s more interesting to me was that he spent nearly $32 million. This included more than $13 million in media buys and an additional $5 million-plus in ad production. Meanwhile, Republican challenger Stacy Garrity raised about $1.8 million in the latest filing and spent nearly $1.6 million.
Will lesbian fanfic derail Sen. Malone’s campaign?
Yes, this headline is real. CBS21’s Joel D. Smith briefly covers a report that just broke that Democrat State Sen. James Malone (Lancaster County), who is in a closely watched race against Republican Tom Jones, authored “fan fiction on Tumblr about lesbian lovers in the world of Dungeons & Dragons” (can’t make this stuff up). Smith reports that “Malone has not denied he wrote it, and it was eventually deleted” according to reports. “Is this a dealbreaker for Lancaster County voters?” You’ll recall, this senate race could make or break a Democrat trifecta in Pennsylvania.
Philly public school teacher faked identity
I have so many things to say about this story that I’m not sure where to start. So instead, I’ll just offer the story itself without commentary. The Inquirer reports that a Philadelphia public school teacher spent years pretending to be Black and Palestinian, playing the part of a “visible member” of both the Racial Justice Organizing Committee and the antisemitic Philly Educators for Palestine. But it turns out that, by her own description, she’s actually “a white woman of significant privilege and wealth.” Her supposed “Palestinian-born grandfather … was actually born in Baltimore.” Oh… so much to say.
Want political mail to stop? Vote early
Attorney Jonathan Goldstein writes in Broad + Liberty that Pennsylvania may not have early voting in the traditional sense of the word, but we have “voting on demand” that functions essentially the same. And he says conservatives need to get on board in using it. “Every week a Republican voter waits to cast a ballot he has already decided how to fill out is a week Republican turnout operations are spending money they don’t need to spend. It’s also a week you spend receiving political communications that will stop as soon as we know you’ve voted.”
That’s because “once the file shows you voted, you disappear from the call list. You disappear from the text-banking queue. Your household drops out of the next mail piece, and the volume of mail addressed to you slows, over the following weeks, to nearly nothing.” It’s not because your vote isn’t important, but because, once you’ve voted, campaign dollars spent chasing your vote can go elsewhere.
How will Shapiro explain that he failed kids?
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board highlights that per a new report from the American Federation for Children, the new federal school choice scholarship program could be big—very big. “Assuming 10% participation by eligible donors, scholarship funds could hit $18.8 billion … or roughly 24% of federal K-12 spending. It’s ‘more than the federal tax benefits each year for charitable giving to every school, college, and university combined.’”
But whether children and families benefit depends what state they live in—and specifically, whether their state’s governor opts into the program. So far, Gov. Shapiro has refused to do so, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars that could help Pennsylvania kids on the table. The Journal pointedly asks, “How will Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro explain that he passed up $747 million to help his state’s families…?”
