For bipartisan group of PA politicos, a decades-long Shapiro connection

When U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean was raising her sons and teaching college English in the early 2000s, she knew she’d someday run for office. And when that day came, the person she called was a longtime acquaintance from Montgomery County political circles, Josh Shapiro.

They weren’t particularly close, but now-Gov. Shapiro – whom Dean had met when he worked for then-U.S. Rep. Joseph Hoeffel – was generous with “smart and savvy” advice, Dean said. A state representative at the time, Shapiro also introduced her to up-and-coming Montco Democrats like Matt Bradford, now the state House Democratic leader and Dean’s good friend.

Before long, the erstwhile English professor succeeded Shapiro, whom she calls her mentor, representing the 153rd District in the state House – and in yet another coincidence, she now holds Hoeffel’s old congressional seat. “The intersecting keeps happening with me and Josh,” she reflected.

Dean isn’t the only one. It’s hard to miss how many prominent people have intersected with Shapiro over the years – and how many Democratic power players share the governor’s roots in the state’s third-most-populous county.

“He has a genuine like of people,” observed Dean. “He remembers folks around here. People literally call him Josh; they feel like they know him.”

Those who have long been in Shapiro’s Montco orbit include Bradford, who originally introduced Shapiro to his Montgomery County Commission running mate (and, later, SEPTA chief) Leslie Richards; Val Arkoosh, who served on the Montgomery County Commission alongside Shapiro and is now the governor’s secretary of human services; and Dana Fritz, his longtime adviser and current chief of staff, who has worked with Shapiro since his county commission days.

 Many are attorneys, such as Carolina DiGiorgio, who worked alongside Shapiro at Stradley Ronon in Philadelphia for a decade beginning in 2006. She later directed commerce for Montgomery County when Shapiro chaired the commission and, until last year, served as the governor’s chief legal counsel in Harrisburg.

Even Republicans like Bruce Castor, a former prosecutor who has defended President Donald Trump in court and who served alongside Shapiro on the Montgomery County Commission, acknowledge the governor’s uncommon gift for relationships. “He would always find a way to make everybody happy,” said Castor, now an attorney with van der Veen, Hartshorn, Levin & Lindheim. “He was a better commissioner than me. He was much more conciliatory, quick to compromise and find a way to reach consensus.”

At Shapiro’s 2017 swearing-in ceremony as state attorney general – a post Castor had held the previous year – the latter was surprised and touched to find a front-row seat labeled with his name and former-AG designation. “He thinks of little things like that,” Castor said.

Leslie Richards recalled how, after her father died early in their commissioner campaign, Shapiro welcomed her newly widowed mother as an integral presence – quietly arranging the campaign’s Sunday event schedule, for instance, to accommodate the women’s weekly religious observance.

“He made it clear to our staff: ‘This is important; this is how we’re going to run things.’ He was so supportive,” said Richards, who now teaches planning at the University of Pennsylvania. “And he always gave my mom special attention, made sure she had a place, especially during that first year.”

Ten years later, after Richards’ mother died of Alzheimer’s, Shapiro showed up at the intimate, unannounced memorial gathering. “I didn’t even know he knew that she had passed. It was a crazy time; we hadn’t spoken much,” she recalled of that pandemic year. “I’ve worked with a lot of people in my career, but I haven’t made that type of bond with a lot of people.”

More than a few longtime associates have known the governor since his boyhood in Dresher, where his father was a pediatrician and his mother a teacher. Attorney Marcel Groen, a family friend of the Shapiros and the father of one of Shapiro’s childhood friends, chaired the Pennsylvania Democratic Party during Shapiro’s rise from county chair to state attorney general.

Uri Monson, whose younger brother was a classmate and friend of Shapiro’s, goes back 40 years with the governor – “I knew him and the first lady before they were dating” – and is currently his secretary of the budget. When the pair both found themselves living in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1990s – Monson had a job at the U.S. Department of Education, while his wife and Shapiro were both studying law at Georgetown – the Montco transplants would get together to watch Eagles games.

As cozy as these relationships may be, Monson emphasized that Shapiro surrounds himself politically with similarly ambitious and capable people, not mere loyalists. “He’s very good at attracting talent, which is not an easy thing to do,” said Monson. His own firsthand experience with the governor’s recruitment style came when Shapiro invited Monson to meet with his transition team after being elected county commissioner. “I thought it was just to sort of give my thoughts on what they were looking at,” recalled Monson. “I didn’t quite realize it was a job interview. But I ended up as CFO for the county.”

Not all of Shapiro’s Montco political relationships have worked out. In September 2023, Mike Vereb, then the governor’s secretary of legislative affairs, abruptly resigned his post after being accused of sexually harassing a colleague, who complained to the state Human Relations Commission. It transpired that the Shapiro administration had paid nearly $300,000 to settle the accuser’s claims several weeks prior.

Shapiro and Vereb, a Republican from West Norriton, shared what has been described as a bipartisan friendship dating back to their state House days, when both represented Montgomery County between 2007 and 2012. Vereb was among Shapiro’s first political appointments when the latter was elected attorney general in 2016, and played a similar role in the current administration as a close adviser and liaison to state government. 

After the complaints – lewd and explicitly sexual in nature – from Vereb’s accuser became public, many wondered how much Shapiro knew about the matter and whether he would issue any form of condemnation. The allegations resurfaced as Shapiro was undergoing national scrutiny as a potential running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. 

After the administration announced Vereb’s resignation in 2023, Shapiro addressed the matter in a news conference, defending his administration’s procedures for handling harassment complaints – but declining to comment directly on his former adviser. 

While Vereb was a trusted colleague for nearly two decades, many of Shapiro’s closest relationships go back even further, to the 1980s. The governor and Monson, for instance, both studied at Akiba Hebrew Academy (now Barrack Hebrew Academy) in Merion Station. 

Philadelphia’s Jewish community was then a hub of the advocacy movement on behalf of Soviet Jewish “refuseniks” – those denied exit visas to emigrate to Israel and practice Judaism freely. The Monsons and Shapiros were both active in that movement, and a young Shapiro participated in a letter-writing campaign, corresponding with a refusenik his own age.

Years later, Shapiro would speak of how this experience shaped his desire to actively make the world a better place – a Jewish concept often referred to by its Hebrew translation, “tikkun olam,” which Shapiro has referenced as a motivation for public service. “Josh genuinely cares, and that comes across,” said Monson.

He cited a favorite quote of Shapiro’s, paraphrasing from the Talmud: “It is not incumbent on you to finish the work, but neither can you desist from doing it.” “He believes it,” said Monson, recalling how Shapiro would often text him to strategize ways to resolve issues for people he’d met at Montco events. “It’s how he was raised … And it’s not from a transactional basis. It’s, ‘I want to help people’ – and that quality is infectious.”

Shapiro’s Jewish faith and values have long been integral to his political identity. While some observers speculated that his Jewishness could have been a liability in last summer’s vice-presidential sweepstakes – as antisemitism flared, driven in no small part by the Israel-Gaza war – those who know Shapiro emphasize the way he uses faith to connect across cultures.

“If you try and hide what’s a part of you, that’ll come through. So why would you do that?” asked Monson rhetorically. “I think people of faith respect other people of faith, regardless of which it is … You know, Josh does Shabbat with his family and that’s important to him. And folks can relate to that and understand it – but he doesn’t talk about it because he’s trying to get votes. He talks about it because that’s his life.”

It’s not just his faith; Shapiro is the product of a tight-knit Jewish community, which not only engendered many of his most enduring relationships but also informs his sense of collective responsibility.

Richards recalled how the pair campaigned in Black churches across Montgomery County: “He would always start off with ‘Our strong faith and shared traditions,’ because there are many – around family, around community, more than any particular religion,” she said. “He would always use those words: ‘We’re in it together.’”

Dean attests that Shapiro connects through faith in his personal relationships, too. “He is Jewish. I am Catholic. We share so many of the same tenets of our faiths,” she noted. Faith “is something that is authentically in his DNA, and shines through in his public life. It’s part of the fabric that is Josh.”

Another key to Shapiro’s relationships – and a similarly inclusive feature – is his gift for listening, according to Monson. “I’ve seen (Shapiro) going around the state, how he listens to people. He doesn’t have to agree with them, but he listens to them with empathy,” he said. “I think it’s one of his best qualities.

“In general, people like to be heard,” Monson added. “And decisions will be made that you may not agree with – but if you felt heard in that decision-making process, you’re going to have more buy-in.”

That ability to listen is particularly important for effective collaboration in a politically divided state like Pennsylvania, said Castor. Like everyone interviewed for this article, he was unsurprised by Shapiro’s rise to national prominence: “I was honestly concerned that he would be selected as the vice-presidential candidate,” admitted the Trump supporter.

His first conversation with Shapiro took place in the early aughts, when Castor was Montgomery County’s district attorney and Shapiro was a state representative from Abington.

“It would be fair to say that I would’ve been the most well-known politician in the county at the time,” said the former D.A. Shapiro came over and introduced himself, then proceeded to bring up nonpartisan issues of mutual interest, such as combating crime. “I thought it was quite gutsy of him,” recalled Castor. “He was a very friendly fellow, and I was impressed with his earnestness.”

Years later, when he was tasked with tackling Montco’s fiscal crisis alongside Shapiro and Richards, “I learned quickly that Josh is about as good an administrator as I’ve ever seen,” Castor added.

He explained that Shapiro apportioned responsibilities according to their areas of expertise: While Castor brought his D.A. background to law enforcement and public safety, and Richards concentrated on transportation and infrastructure, Shapiro applied his General Assembly experience to the county’s social and human services.

“He essentially divided the government up into three columns, with each one of the commissioners in one of those columns, setting aside partisanship – because there was no partisan way of digging us out of that hole ­– and it worked very well,” Castor said. “The entire system of government in the United States, certainly in Pennsylvania, is designed on compromise, and he was very, very good at it.”

Looking back, his fellow commissioner marvels at the serendipity of that collaboration. “I didn’t realize until afterwards how rare that was,” said Richards, who later served alongside Shapiro in then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration (he was state attorney general; she headed the Department of Transportation).

But her favorite Shapiro story is from the final weekend of that 2011 commissioners’ campaign. As the pair drove down Route 202 in Norristown, they were shocked to see a huge, grainy and grotesquely unflattering black-and-white billboard of themselves sponsored by the opposition. “It literally looked like our heads were connected – like some type of Star Trek mind-meld,” recalled Richards. “It was such a weird picture.”

Shapiro pulled over so they could study it, and when they were through giggling, “I was like, ‘Well, in a few days, we’ll know if this all panned out or not.’ I was still doubtful. But at that moment, I saw in his eyes: ‘Oh, we’re gonna win. We have to win, and we’re gonna win.’”

It’s that blend of personal connection, know-how and strategy that Dean says is Shapiro’s winning formula. “The sharpness of his intellect stands out anytime you’re with him,” she said. “And it’s a very positive spark – he can get very deep into issues that he cares about. You never think, ‘Maybe he doesn’t get it.’

“And you combine that with his talent for people – his ability to have relationships that endure – it’s an extraordinarily strong foundation,” Dean elaborated. “Whether they’re coming from business or government or faith communities, he has gathered people to himself in a very authentic way.”