GOP senator enters gov. race
MANCHESTER, Pa. — Scott Wagner, the maverick York County state senator who made millions in the trash-hauling industry, said Wednesday he will run for Pennsylvania’s Republican nomination for governor, casting himself as a businessman who will squeeze savings from government, improve the economy and make trains run on time.
His announcement to challenge first-term Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf in 2018 was a formality: Wagner, 61, has said for weeks that he would run. The primary 16 months away.
Wagner made the formal announcement at one of his Penn Waste facilities in Manchester and suggested he would put millions of his own money into his campaign. He embarked afterward on a two-day, six-event schedule around the state, where he is a virtual unknown outside of his home turf.
In the capital and around York, Wagner is known for his brash personality and tough talk, and he showed a willingness to take that on the campaign trail.
“I know what I’m all about. I know what I stand for. I know what the issues are,” Wagner told reporters. “I’m running hard. I am going to be the next governor. Take that to the bank.”
Wagner’s push for conservative fiscal policies has sowed friction with public-sector labor unions and Democrats, and he has made waves in Harrisburg over his criticism of fellow Republicans he didn’t see as conservative enough.
The American Conservative Union rated Wagner as among the Senate’s five most conservative senators.
He has been in office since 2014, when he won a write-in bid over the GOP’s hand-picked candidate, a veteran state lawmaker, in an expensive and bruising primary in which establishment Republicans sought to defeat him.
Even before he ran for state Senate, he donated heavily to conservative candidates and causes. He continued to spend heavily on Republican campaigns in 2016.
He is perhaps most motivated by his disgust with what he characterizes as a feckless and unresponsive state government that taxes and regulates business owners to death.
He attacked Wolf as the primary obstacle, calling him a “failed governor” who has done nothing to change that.
The state Democratic Party framed Wagner as someone who would balance budgets by cutting aid to public schools and opposing more money for programs to fight the state’s wave of heroin and prescription-drug addiction.
