Can Scott Wagner Buy PA?

We'll be talking about Scott Wagner often in the months ahead, because he's running for Governor of Pennsylvania, and it would really be better for the Commonwealth if he did not succeed.

There are many things to know about Scott Wagner. People like to note that he has explained global warming-- it's either that the earth is moving closer to the sun, or possibly all those humans giving off body heat. He's a wealthy business man who has launched several businesses, but it's the trash biz that really made him wealthy. He's anti-union, and pretty sure that poor people are poor because they're lazy.

This frickin' guy

He recently made it clear that he would not be releasing his financials. His reason is simple-- he doesn't want his employees to know how much he makes because they might get the crazy idea that they should be paid more.

Wagner is a Cinderella story of sorts-- he made it to the PA Senate by beating both the GOP and Democratic candidate with write in votes. Granted, the voter turnout no more than 17%, but the GOP went from trying to box him out of the race to embracing him as a powerful new voice, and he quickly acquired clout in Harrisburg.

Some folks attribute that to a "no-nonsense style" with pronouncements like:

I'm gonna be sitting in the back of the room with a baseball bat. And leadership is gonna start doing things for [sic] Pennsylvania needs done.

Comments like that strike me as all-nonsense, but Wagner is one more millionaire who sells his common touch. It's part of his package, along with his multiple marriages and rocky personal history that his opponents have tried-- and failed-- to use against him (e.g. Wagner once had a protection abuse order brought against him by a daughter for choking her-- they are now tight and she works on his campaign).

But Wagner has another not-so-common touch feature-- he throws around a lot of money.

Wagner may seem like a political novice, but he was in the game well before he ran for Senator. The York Daily Record (his home town paper) figured in 2016 that since 2007, Wagner had spent more than $3.2 million dollars on political races. The 49th state Senate race in Erie County resulted in a seat flipped from Democratic to Republican; Wagner was the single largest contributor with a whopping $595,250 spent on the race. And he has spent aggressively on primary races, to make sure that the Right Kind of Republican is elected.

Wagner has spent more than $100,000 on several causes, including individual campaigns and to several PACs, including one that he's set up on his own and another that aims specifically to end teacher pensions in PA (you'll be unshocked to know that Wagner also opposes teacher tenure and other job protections). He hates taxes, and he wants Pennsylvania to be organized around what businesses want, and he has thrown a lot of money at campaigns for those causes.

At the same time, Wagner has become more pragmatic. Where he once railed against lobbying firms-- particularly those that served as PR firms for the campaigns of officials they would later lobby-- he now employs exactly that kind of firm. If you want to take over the state government, you have to be willing to pay up. Wagner promised he would throw seven figures worth of his money at the campaign, and there's no reason to doubt him.

Wagner is as clear an anti-labor, pro-rich guy candidate as you're going to find. He's a fan of Trump and Scott Walker. He hates unions, particularly the teacher union, and would like to gut them from every possible angle. He's a very rich guy who thinks that his money should give him the power to reshape the state to suit his own preferences. If you care about teachers or public education, it is not too early to start working to support Governor Tom Wolf.