Argall’s lieutenant governor bill survives round 1

The Pennsylvania Senate has approved Sen. David Argall’s bill to allow gubernatorial nominees to pick their lieutenant gubernatorial running mates right after the primaries.

Approving Argall’s bill calling for a constitutional amendment by a 46-2 vote, the Senate action wraps up phase one of the protracted process, which will now be sidelined until the 2021-22 legislative session when the bill must go through the same hurdle.

The House earlier also approved the bill, 130-67, with most of the opposition coming from Democrats. Argall is a Republican who represents Schuylkill County.

If both houses of the state Legislature approve the bill again next session, then the question will go to us voters in the form of a referendum.

Many state voters are surprised to hear that in the primaries, gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial candidates run separately, not necessarily as a team.

This can lead to some strange bedfellows as the 2014 election showed. Political newcomer Tom Wolf captured the Democratic primary, handily crushing much better known candidates such as state Treasurer Rob McCord and ex-U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz.

Michael J. Stack III, a four-term state senator from Philadelphia, and part of the well-greased Philadelphia Democratic political machine, won the 2014 primary for lieutenant governor, besting four other candidates including a former U.S. representative, a state representative, a Harrisburg city councilman and a Bradford County commissioner.

Wolf and Stack were chilly toward each other before the primary, and after their respective wins put them on the same ticket for the general election, things got even frostier. Stack had so many slip-ups that Wolf privately met with him and told him in no uncertain terms to shape up and put restrictions on him and his wife. Wolf and Stack didn’t speak for months.

Argall saw these disruptive dynamics unfolding before him and his colleagues and decided to try to end this unusual practice, which led to his introduction of Senate Bill 133.

Argall had enlisted the support of fellow legislator, state Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Schuylkill-Carbon, to help shepherd the legislation through the House.

Argall sees it as a logical step to improve the dialogue between these two key state officers. “In the past, we have seen a leadership team separate into two warring factions that spent weeks not talking to one another,” Argall said. “If we want to succeed in Pennsylvania, then the commonwealth’s top two executive officials need to see eye-to-eye on the issues and not get distracted by petty rivalries.”

Argall makes no bones about the fact that the Wolf-Stack situation is what motivated him to take action, but he also pointed to contentiousness between former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and then-Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll. Argall’s bill would give gubernatorial candidates the right to pick their running mates after the primaries, which is the way that presidential candidates select their vice presidential running mates.

Former Lt. Gov. Stack was defeated in 2018 in a bid for re-election, coming in fourth among five candidates. The winner, John Fetterman, has a congenial relationship with the governor and has been assigned a number of important tasks, such as last year’s statewide listening tour on whether marijuana (cannabis) should be legalized for recreational use.

Still, many consider the lieutenant governor as a figurehead. The second-in-command’s main constitutional duty is to preside over the state Senate but has a vote only in the event of a tie, a rarity.

The last time a lieutenant governor did so was in 2015 when Stack cast the tiebreaking “no” vote on the very important bill that would have eliminated billions of dollars in school property taxes by replacing the lost funds with increases in state income and sales taxes. The Senate had deadlocked 24-24. Ironically, the bill was sponsored by Argall, who leads the fight for property tax reform until this very day.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com