With continuing pressure on President Biden to step aside for a different 2024 Democratic nominee amid questions about his mental acuity, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has been floated as a potential candidate to replace him.
As governor of one of the most closely-watched swing states and one that could decide the 2024 election, what does his current record suggest about how he would handle the border crisis which has gripped the U.S. for over three years?
Shapiro ruled himself out as a replacement for Biden last year, saying he fully expected Biden to run and would not be a candidate even if he stepped aside. He said that he intends to serve all four years as governor
“The answer is no. I just asked the good people of Pennsylvania to be their governor,” Shapiro said in an interview with KDKA .
“This type of baseless speculation is just a distraction – and it is unhelpful to accomplishing what we need to do this November: defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box,” Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
As Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Shapiro was a loud voice of opposition to some of former President Trump’s border policies. In 2018, he was one of a number of attorneys general who filed a lawsuit against the practice of separating some families at the border. That policy was eventually scrapped, and the Biden administration has reached a settlement with families that were separated.
Shapiro called the policy “abhorrent” and “inconsistent with U.S. asylum laws, and is fundamentally at odds with our core principles and values.”