Can Josh Shapiro Become the First Jewish President of the United States?
His new book suggests he might think so.
By Gerald Early
February 28, 2026
Where We Keep The Light: Stories from a Life of Service
[Trump] told me he’d be more than happy to work together and form a relationship, and that now that I had his number, I should feel free to call him anytime I needed something or wanted to talk, and that he would take my call. He cautioned that I shouldn’t want to be president, given how dangerous it had become to hold the office now.
—Josh Shapiro recounting his conversation with President Donald Trump when Trump called him after the firebombing of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion during Passover in April 2025. Where We Keep The Light (14-15), (italics mine)
When did people start to believe that you are only there to represent the people who voted for you?
—Josh Shapiro, Where We Keep The Light (221)
It is reasonable to assume that Where We Keep the Light is Democratic Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s campaign book, that he is likely to make a try for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028. Why not? An obscure Democratic governor from Georgia made it to the presidency in 1976, and Shapiro, at this stage of the game, is not nearly as unknown or improbable as Jimmy Carter was at the same stage. Shapiro is a popular governor of a crucial battleground state, and he was seriously considered for the vice presidency when Kamala Harris ran in 2024, some feeling that she made a serious tactical error not picking him as she, like Donald Trump, so desperately needed Pennsylvania to win. He has more bona fides for a run than some of the other pretenders to the throne, including proven, indeed impressive, skills at retail politics. He has knocked on many doors in his early days running for state representative and feels confident he can persuade people, can, as it is said these days, “relate” to people.
Moreover, there is no clear frontrunner among the Democrats, the party lacks leadership, and ideological running lanes are open. That lane that Shapiro is staking out is the liberal, bipartisan centrist.
“It’s always made sense to me to work with people across the aisle,” Shapiro writes, “Certainly, in Pennsylvania, a place with an independent streak that has sent Republicans and Democrats to the state House and the White House. Nothing can get done if you don’t work with people in both parties. I’m never going to compromise my principles, but I am not going to be a purist, either.” (99) He emphasized this about himself to the panel that vetted him for the vice presidency: “Look, I told them, we need to win the swing states—especially Pennsylvania—and the reason I have earned the support I have from Pennsylvanians is because I have at times been willing to take different positions because they’re what I believe. Because I reflect the common-sense senisiblities of my home state. My support on these issues from people on both sides of the aisle is a huge part of the reason I am here.” (231)
Shapiro said this about working with the Republican County Commissioner, when he became Chairman of the County Commission in Montgomery County, “For as smoothly and fruitfully as we worked together, our alliance was met with resistance from our parties. … I think back to this time, especially in our current political moment, in which there are not many examples of politicians reaching across the aisle to find common ground and commonsense solutions.” (107) What we have here is the commonsense (that magical bit of cant used by liberal centrists like Shapiro, who used it probably four or five times in his book, and especially and passionately by the right), problem-solving, non-ideologically driven politician as hero. After the intense polarization of the last several years, perhaps the voters are ready for a new “third” way, as it was called in the 1990s reigns of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Shapiro’s only possible rival for this lane would be former Chicago mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahn Emmanuel, who, rumor has it, is also considering a run to save the party from hardcore leftists. Emmanuel is also a Jew.
It is difficult to gauge how well a Jewish candidate who is not as left-wing as Bernie Sanders will do among today’s Democratic Party faithful, who are more pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel than in the past, October 7 a seeming flashpoint of this ardency for the non-western “resistance” of Islam and Arabs against the Israeli re-occupation of Gaza. (Resistance, of course, being the passion-play word of the left.) At demonstrations on the University of Pennsylvania campus during the height of the student protests against Israel’s war against Gaza or Gaza’s war against Israel, Shapiro was called “Genocide Josh.” He was offended when asked during the vetting process for the vice-presidential slot if he had ever been an agent for the Israeli government, understandably so, as the question had a Dreyfuss-like taint to it. (240) (Beware the Jonathan Pollards hidden among us! Out the Zionists!)
What we have here is the commonsense (that magical bit of cant used by liberal centrists like Shapiro, who used it probably four or five times in his book, and especially and passionately by the right), problem-solving, non-ideologically driven politician as hero. After the intense polarization of the last several years, perhaps the voters are ready for a new “third” way, as it was called in the 1990s reigns of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
Vice President Harris asked him during the vetting process if he was willing to apologize for statements he made condemning aspects of the protests at Penn. He refused. “Most of the speech on campus, even that which I disagreed with, was peaceful and constitutionally protected. But some wasn’t peaceful, was designed to instill fear and incite violence, and I wouldn’t back down from calling that out.” (242) He continues: “I had been critical of the protestors who were vandalizing the campus, assaulting and intimidating Jewish students, and shutting down the main quad. The people vetting me didn’t seem to like what I had done. I told them that the safety of students on campus had been threatened, and I would take that position to protect them, or any other student group who’s (sic) safety was at risk, any day.” (233)
Shapiro makes it clear in his book that he is unapologetically Jewish. He writes about celebrating Passover on the night that the Governor’s Mansion was bombed: “Passover is particularly important to us now. Since the tragic events of October 7, we feel both a responsibility and pride demonstrating our faith and living it out loud. We know that many feel like it’s a trying time to live Jewishly. That doesn’t make us shy away from it. In fact, it leads us toward it. We have made it a point to show our faith.” (2) Later, he writes, “Of course, antisemitism has gotten impossible to ignore over the last few years—much more real, both in the number of incidents and in how present it feels around us. I often have people come tell me they were comforted by the fact that I was willing to live my life openly and proudly as a Jew, that it gave them confidence to do the same.” (190)
It is uncertain how much of a problem that might be with some of the Democratic Party faithful if Shapiro chooses to run, if it is the mood right now among them that he must apologize for being a Jew, something clearly he does not intend to do. If he ran, he may force his party to confront an important issue about where it should stand on, well, for lack of a better phrase, the Jewish presence in the Middle East as a nation. Perhaps he can bridge a growing divide and do his party a big political favor. A successful Jewish presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2028 could be the savior of liberal/left-wing politics in America.
For the liberal faithful, Shapiro has the proper attitude toward Trump, “His entire message is built around resentment, around going backward, around creating false enemies and blaming others. His approach is to attack institutions, to do away with norms, to go after marginalized people in this country, and then present himself as the only savior. Politics of grievance.” (37) In this way, Shapiro is not to be confused with Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator John Fetterman, whose attitude toward Trump and the Republicans is less, shall we say, oppositional, as he is more apt publicly to criticize his party, although Shapiro himself is not especially bellicose or a fire-breathing Trump hater. He mentions how often he sued the Trump administration during the years when he was Pennsylvania’s attorney general, but also writes, “I wasn’t going to sue him for the sake of it. My job isn’t to sue the guy because I disagree with him or dislike him; I can and would only sue him if what he was doing was illegal.” He adds, “… I got slammed at times from the resistance for not taking on every fight or joining every lawsuit.” (130) On the whole, the impression he gives is that his opposition to Trump is committed and reasonable, not capricious, hysterical, or resistance for resistance’s sake. You do not burn down your house in order to rid it of mice. In other words, to be the centrist liberal is not to overreact to the opposition. Whether your own party believes this makes you the adult in the room is debatable, but the stance has its appeal. If he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, this measured approach might appeal to liberal voters who suffer from Trump-resistance fatigue.
Fetterman talked about Shapiro extensively in his book, Unfettered, focusing on the time both men, by virtue of the offices they held—Fetterman as lieutenant governor and Shapiro as attorney general—served on the Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons. Fetterman felt that Shapiro’s caution about issuing pardons was more about “political ambition,” not wanting someone he supported to be released who would then go on to commit new crimes. Fetterman’s view of Shapiro was that he is a man looking for higher offices. (Unfettered, 70-72) Shapiro provides a brief account of his time on this board in his book, but does not mention any disagreements with Fetterman. In fact, Fetterman is only mentioned twice, in passing, in Where We Keep The Light. The fact that Shapiro did not feel a need to talk about Fetterman says a great deal about both men and their unstated rivalry. Shapiro’s Board of Pardons service is wrapped in a larger discussion about his re-thinking the death penalty (he grew to oppose it), his efforts at reducing recidivism, his support of the police (during the George Floyd protests), but his awareness that they required better training. Shapiro feels his biggest accomplishments as attorney general was prosecuting Catholic clergy for decades-long sexual abuse and fighting a major health insurer from making a merger that would have disadvantaged subscribers of another insurer.
On the whole, the impression he gives is that his opposition to Trump is committed and reasonable, not capricious, hysterical, or resistance for resistance’s sake. You do not burn down your house in order to rid it of mice. In other words, to be the centrist liberal is not to overreact to the opposition.
It was perhaps the size of Shapiro’s political ambition that made Harris ultimately reject him as her running mate. Once he realized he could not hack the pre-med curriculum and follow his father’s footsteps into a career as a physician, he successfully got into campus politics at the University of Rochester. This led to a career as a staffer in Washington, then a successful campaign for a Pennsylvania State House seat (which he ultimately left because he wanted to be an executive, the guy in charge), county commissioner, state attorney general, and, finally, governor. “Your job, [Harris] explained to me is to make sure that you are not a problem for the president,” Shapiro writes, “That every day the president is trying to run the country and void World War III and your job is to do whatever is needed to support the president.” (243) Harris told him that her chief of staff would be giving him his directions. He would have limited access to her, and she had no interest in hearing any of his policy opinions. “To her great credit, she was completely honest with me,” Shapiro notes. Some of Harris’s attitude could be attributed to her intense dislike of the vice presidency and her intention not to make it any easier or expansive for her successor. You do not haze the person who hazed you, but rather the person who comes after you. Also, I detect that she was wary of his ambition, that he might not know how to play the sidekick, that, given any leeway, he had the personality and political skills to upstage her. She was determined to keep her foot on his neck, if it came to that. She stifled any thoughts of some sort of stealth attempt at a co-presidency, which was her right. She chose Minnesota governor Tim Walz instead, perhaps because he seemed less of a threat to overstep boundaries.
Where We Keep The Light is a cagey book, hardly surprising for a politician as skilled as Shapiro to write. Clearly wishing to capitalize on the national fame he achieved when he was considered for the vice presidency and was so touted as the superior candidate for it, even by Trump supporters, who breathed a sigh of relief that he was not chosen, the book gives his resume, stakes out his positions, makes the case for him as both the hard-working but empathetic professional and the dedicated family man, and takes sonar soundings of the political deep in hopes of hearing something other than an echo. It also makes a nice complement to Fetterman’s Unfettered. The two men are strikingly different, although they both agree in their support of Israel.
