Pennsylvania Democrats are raising concerns over an unknown question that President Donald Trump asked state Treasurer Stacy Garrity before he publicly endorsed her campaign for governor this year.
“The voters should know what the question was,” Eugene DePasquale, chair of the state party, said Friday afternoon.
Garrity told Republican insiders at a private dinner this month that she landed Trump’s endorsement after answering just one question, according to an audio recording obtained by WITF.
But Garrity did not say what that question was, and her campaign has not responded to repeated requests for further information.
“You’re talking about getting an endorsement from the president of the United States,” DePasquale said. “If the question was helpful to her, she would have probably said what it was.”
The state Democratic Party has published multiple news releases criticizing Garrity for not publicly saying what Trump had asked her, alleging that she is more loyal to advancing Trump’s agenda than doing what is best for the commonwealth. That’s a message the party has tried to pin on Garrity since she first announced her candidacy last year.
Garrity is a longtime ally of Trump running to oust incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro in November’s election. No candidates have challenged her for the GOP nomination in the May 19 primary.
Shapiro’s spokesman, Manuel Bonder, tagged Garrity and Congressman Scott Perry — who Garrity said relayed the question from Trump over the phone — in a social media post Thursday evening. He referred further comment to the state Democratic Party.
“What did (Stacy Garrity) promise Donald Trump in exchange for his endorsement?” Bonder wrote in his post. “What are she and (Scott Perry) hiding?”
WINNING AN ENDORSEMENT
DePasquale said Garrity’s endorsement process sounded unusual. There is usually direct contact between the endorser and endorsee, he said, and an assessment of each candidate’s values.
“I mean, that’s how most people do it,” DePasquale said. “I don’t think that’s how Donald Trump does it, but that’s how most people do it.”
Shapiro detailed in his memoir, “Where We Keep The Light,” how in the 2016 Democratic Party primary for Pennsylvania attorney general, he won then-President Barack Obama’s endorsement in a three-person race.
Similar to Garrity and Trump, Shapiro noted he already had a years-long relationship with Obama that he built up during various in-person events they both participated in. This relationship included Shapiro, then a state representative, being an early backer of Obama’s 2008 presidential bid when some party members had endorsed Hillary Clinton.
So after Shapiro’s wife suggested in 2015 that he ask Obama for an endorsement in the attorney general race, Shapiro coordinated with an Obama aide to email the president to request support.
Shapiro, a Montgomery County commissioner at the time, said a few weeks passed before he heard anything. Then he got a phone call.
“I answered an unknown number,” Shapiro wrote in his book. “It was the White House political director, David Simas, calling. He had just come from a meeting with President Obama, he told me. He’s going to endorse you. He’d put out a statement and we’d be able to use his voice in an ad.”