The Philadelphia Inquirer: “As governor, Garrity would oversee a department that regulates a for-profit insurance company for which she’s currently a paid board member.”
Garrity can’t be trusted on the issues that matter the most to Pennsylvanians — especially as she tries to erase her record and extreme stances
PENNSYLVANIA — Yesterday, new reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer exposed Stacy Garrity is using her office to collect a second paycheck from her paid position on the board of an insurance company and stands to profit “$195,000 annually for five years” from a pending acquisition — the latest in a string of “potential conflicts as she seeks higher office” that shows Garrity cannot be trusted to be transparent with Pennsylvanians.
Now, Garrity owes Pennsylvanians answers for trying to cover up her “massive payments from insurance companies,” and her pattern of erasing her record and extreme stances that have proved her to be “the biggest hypocrite in Pennsylvania” whose “pitch [to voters] doesn’t add up.”
Answers Stacy Garrity Owes the People of Pennsylvania:
1. How can Pennsylvanians, who pay your first salary, trust you to safeguard their hard earned money when you have leveraged your “background as treasurer” to double your income with a second salary from an insurance company?
2. Why did you lie to Pennsylvanians that you are new to politics when you spent nearly ten years pushing legislation that benefited your company, including pushing for tariffs? Why did you fail to register as a lobbyist?
3. Why are you refusing to reveal the shady promise you made to Trump in exchange for his endorsement? What more could you possibly have promised him?
4. Why did you post that you look forward to working with RFK Jr. and then quickly delete the post?
5. Why did you delete the anti-abortion merchandise you sold to raise campaign funds for years?
6. Why did you scrub your campaign website to cover up your broken campaign promise to serve two full terms as Treasurer?
Read More:
The Philadelphia Inquirer: Stacy Garrity could make almost $200k from Pa. insurance company board. She’d resign if elected governor.
- As governor, Garrity would oversee a department that regulates a for-profit insurance company for which she’s currently a paid board member.
- Garrity, 62, earned $57,290 as a board member last year, her campaign said. If a pending acquisition closes, she stands to make more than three times that amount, according to federal securities filings. Garrity’s annual salary as treasurer is $211,219, according to state records.
- Shapiro campaign spokesperson Manuel Bonder accused Garrity of using her public office to “rake in massive payments from insurance companies.”
- In 2024 she joined the board of ECM Insurance Group, a Bedford County-based firm that was founded in 1913 […] Its businesses include Everett Cash Mutual Insurance Co., 1st Choice Advantage Insurance Co., and American Reliable Insurance Co.
- “With her military background, the leadership she had there, and what she’d done from a business standpoint — finding good talent is what I always look for in directors,” ECM CEO Randy Shaw said in an interview. He added that Garrity’s background as treasurer and understanding of finance added value to the board.
- “We talked. She never had served on an insurance board before, but I said, ‘Well, we can educate you on the insurance side of it,’” Shaw said. “‘It’s the business practice, governance side of it that you can bring value to.’”
- In October, Chicago-based insurer Old Republic International Corp. announced that it was acquiring ECM — a deal that requires approval from Pennsylvania regulators and ECM policyholders […] If they sign off on the transaction, policyholders and other stakeholders — including Garrity — could each be eligible to buy up to $350,000 in Old Republic stock at a discount of at least 30%, according to securities filings.
- Garrity’s campaign said that if the transaction closes, she plans to join an ECM advisory board. Corporate records show she would be paid $195,000 annually for five years.
WHYY: Did Pa. governor candidate Stacy Garrity need to register as a lobbyist? Her work for a defense contractor raises questions
- Before taking office as Pennsylvania treasurer in January 2021, Stacy Garrity served in senior positions at a defense contractor, where a significant part of her last role focused heavily on influencing public policy tied to military manufacturing and global trade, an activity commonly known as “lobbying.”
- She has publicly taken credit for successfully moving legislation forward and has met with legislators and otherwise pushed her company’s interests with government officials. And yet, she never registered as a lobbyist.
- However, Garrity’s role and activities highly suggest she easily passed thresholds that would legally require her to do so, Craig Holman of the public interest nonprofit Public Citizen told WHYY News.
- “Even the title she had as vice president of government affairs is a code name for lobbyists,” Holman, a registered lobbyist for his organization, said. And “judging from all the things that she has described herself as doing, I believe she should have registered as a lobbyist.”
- He called the fact that she didn’t register “a big red flag” for someone running for higher office with significant ties to industry influence.
- “As a lobbyist … you have to rely on building a network of relations with other lobbyists,” Holman said. “She not only worked as a lobbyist, she worked with other lobbyists and has a rather unique relationship with the lobbying community.”
- Beyond meetings and public statements, Garrity also personally signed and submitted several comments on proposed federal rules and trade actions on behalf of GTP.
- One of those comments was submitted the day before she took office as treasurer, that one urging the incoming Biden administration to take remedial trade action on upstream tungsten. Holman said that it was surprising she continued such activities during her campaign but that by not registering, she was “avoiding saying that to the public.”
WITF: Republican Stacy Garrity should disclose question that led to Trump’s endorsement, Democrats say
- 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.
Keystone Newsroom: Stacy Garrity deletes photo with RFK Jr. following MAHA rally
WESA: Garrity attacks on political ambition are hypocritical, Dems say
- In her 2020 state treasurer’s race, Garrity launched her political career by similarly arguing that incumbent Democrat Joe Torsella would use a second term to seek another office. But that, critics observe, is what Garrity is doing now that she’s mounting a gubernatorial run in her second term.
- On her campaign website at the time, Garrity urged Torsella to “sign a ‘Do the Job’ pledge, promising the voters that he will fulfill all four years of his term if reelected.”
- Pennsylvanians “deserve a treasurer who will commit to the job [and] not hop from one political office to another,” the site said […] by the time Garrity laid groundwork for her own re-election run, there were signs she was doing the same thing.
- As early as 2023, she publicly toyed with a run against longtime U.S. Sen. Bob Casey. And in early 2024, an updated version of her website appears to have deleted criticism of those who might run for higher office while serving as treasurer.
- Archived versions of her website show that between February and April of 2024, her site’s “issues” page dropped references to the “Do the Job” pledge, apparently as part of an update for her reelection bid.
- During the 2020 bid, Garrity promised repeatedly not to seek office if elected, and at least one media account paraphrased her making a similar assurance if reelected: “She committed to serving a full four-year second term,” reported the website Pennlive.
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