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If Vice President Kamala Harris ends up picking Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, over the next three months he may find himself facing attacks over what has arguably been the only genuine scandal of his tenure in Pennsylvania’s top elected office.
Last September, news outlets reported that Mike Vereb, Shapiro’s liaison to the state legislature, had abruptly resigned after being accused months earlier of making inappropriate, lewd and sexually suggestive comments to a female employee he oversaw.
Vereb is a Republican from Montgomery County, where Shapiro started his political career. They had overlapping tenures as legislators in the state House, and after Shapiro was elected attorney general he made Vereb his director of government affairs.
Shortly after Shapiro became governor in January 2023, Vereb allegedly began harassing the female staffer and making sexual advances, leading her to quit in March, according to complaints she prepared for the state’s Human Rights Commission and the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.
She alleged the governor knew about concerns about Vereb’s past behavior when he hired him, and failed to address the harassment or protect her from retaliation.
Shapiro’s administration has repeatedly declined to comment on the accusations. It paid out $295,000 as part of a settlement, which included a clause barring both sides from discussing the allegations.
Concerns about a Shapiro vice presidency
The settlement drew national attention at the time. Claims that Shapiro tolerated Vereb’s harassment of the employee and took too long to dismiss him “threaten to cut at the heart of the governor’s political identity,” given his previous high-profile work investigating sex abuse by Catholic priests and his strong pro-women’s rights positions, according to a Politico analysis.
Complaints about Shapiro’s handling of the incident surfaced again after Harris began considering the governor as a running mate in her bid for the presidency.
Erin McLelland, the Democratic nominee for state Treasurer, took a jab at Shapiro over the Vereb case last month. She endorsed North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, saying she wanted a VP pick that “doesn’t sweep sexual harassment under the rug.” Her comments were quickly picked up by Fox News and the New York Post.
The National Women’s Defense League, a group founded in 2022 to prevent sexual harassment in state government and to protect survivors, also expressed concern about Shapiro’s candidacy.
“The American people deserve to know that, if called to a higher office, Governor Shapiro will do more to ensure the safety and dignity of employees, volunteers and constituents in his office,” the group said.
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