Josh Shapiro’s school-voucher about-face echoes back to his 2022 campaign for governor

Clout hears echoes of last year’s election for governor in this week’s Pennsylvania state budget bickering, which concluded Wednesday with Democratic sighs of relief and Republican cries of betrayal.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat pushing his first budget, played both sides of the school voucher issue — first offering support for a measure that would have sent $100 million in public tax dollars to private schools, then slicing it from the spending deal with a promised line-item veto.

Consider what happened nine months ago, when Shapiro offered cautious support for the voucher program “concept” in September while running for governor, sparking concern in his party.

Something curious occurred right around then — Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a political action committee that has spent millions to push vouchers, abruptly pulled from the airwaves a trio of television commercials that painted Shapiro as a “self-interested politician” who would wreck the economy with inflation and higher energy costs.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, always trailed Shapiro in resources and needed all the help he could get. A conservative PAC walking away from the race was a bad but not surprising sign, since Commonwealth Leaders Fund blew $13 million trying to stop Mastriano from winning the 2022 primary.

Shapiro’s campaign last year said he cut no deals with Commonwealth Leaders Fund. Matt Brouillette, who runs the PAC, tweeted last September about Shapiro’s support for vouchers but later told Clout he killed the commercials before Shapiro made those remarks.

Remember Clout’s rule on coincidences: We don’t believe in them.

The windows of the Harrisburg building where Brouillette operates, across the street from the Capitol, are filled with pictures of Shapiro next to big-font quotes from him about vouchers. Last Friday, in an email newsletter, Brouillette reveled in the Democratic dissension about the issue, suggesting that media coverage showed “the panic is palpable.”

Then came Shapiro’s promise of a line-item veto, which he blamed Thursday on Senate Republicans sending House Democrats a budget they would not pass.

Brouillette, in tweets Wednesday, accused Shapiro of double-crossing Senate Republicans on vouchers and reneging on his word to voters.

He mixed it up with Mastriano as well after the former GOP nominee tweeted that “establishment Republicans made a Faustian deal” with Shapiro last year “to work against my campaign in exchange for a pledge that he’d support school choice.”

Brouillette returned fire, telling Mastriano “you have zero evidence of this, and yet you regularly lie about it. The facts are that the biggest school choice supporters tried to help you and you declined. I have all the exchanges if you’d like me to share them publicly.”

Clout can’t speak for Mastriano but — uh — yes, please. Do share.

Mastriano, Brouilette later noted, then deleted his tweet.

Clout knows several people in Philly politics who were shipped off to the “70th Ward” — a local Democratic Party nickname for federal prison — on corruption charges. Not many found opportunity there.

Ken Smukler did things differently.

He was former U.S. Rep. Bob Brady’s top political strategist in 2018 when a jury convicted him on nine counts of violating federal campaign finance laws. Brady, chair of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, was not charged in the case.

Smukler, who weighed 285 pounds then, decided to use prison time to drop 100 of them. He detailed it all in his new book, The JailBird Diet: Losing 100 Pounds and Finding Myself Behind Bars.

“A federal prison is a perfect environment in which to begin the process of radical life simplification,” Smukler wrote in chapter four.

Not that his plan was so radical. He reduced his calories while burning hours of not-so-free time by walking up to six hours a day around the track at the federal prison in South Jersey where he spent 10 months.

Smukler estimates he walked 1,086 miles in the 310 days he was there, missing just 10 days of exercise.

He builds this narrative on a comparison to Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century philosopher who wrote about simplifying life in Walden.

The book’s first 10 chapters focus not on food but on decluttering the mind of “junk” like cable news programming, social media, and email. By reading literature, listening to classical music, and doing crossword puzzles instead, Smukler suggests you can distract yourself from hunger by feeding your mind.

Smukler told Clout he gained back about 60 pounds after being released in 2020 but has since shed 10 of them and is now working to find the balance in life and eating to drop the rest.

Former Lt. Gov. Mike Stack III is giving comedy another go, appearing at The Comedy Chateau in North Hollywood last week.

Clout detailed Stack’s stage and screen career in 2020, when he performed as “Mikey Stacks” in gigs for the LA School of Comedy.

Stack, who spends his East Coast time as CEO of telemedicine start-up, flirted with a run for mayor this year.

He told Clout this week he has another comedy gig in Los Angeles soon and also recently acted in two short films.

Stack is a longtime, part-time actor who appeared in Rocky II as a kid. He also appeared in a 2021 reality TV show, shopping for a California’s beach house.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.