State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta is looking to unseat the state’s top Republican in the Auditor General’s race

What exactly does an auditor general do, anyway?

It’s a question that candidates to become Pennsylvania’s auditor general frequently encounter when speaking with voters, and one that almost always comes down to taxes.

When Pennsylvanians pay state taxes, those funds are deposited into the state’s treasury and eventually dispersed to government agencies or groups that contract with the government.

The auditor general — one of the state’s three row offices — is responsible for monitoring the distribution of those taxpayer funds to catch waste, fraud, and mismanagement and to ensure that state-funded programs are operating as they should.

With Pennsylvanians already voting by mail and with in-person voting on Nov. 5, they have the option to cast ballots for Republican incumbent Auditor General Tim DeFoor, who is running for a second term, and challenger Democratic State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta. Several third-party candidates also seek the office.

DeFoor, 62, is a Harrisburg native who previously served as a special agent for the state attorney general’s office, an internal fraud manager and investigator for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the Dauphin County controller before he was elected as the state’s highest-ranking Republican in 2020.

Kenyatta, 34, has represented his North Philadelphia district in the General Assembly since 2018 and has quickly become one of the Pennsylvania Democrats’ top public messengers and a key surrogate for both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Commonwealth.

The Inquirer spoke with both candidates in the final weeks of the campaign season.

In his bid for reelection, DeFoor has described himself as a lifelong auditor who has brought overdue improvements to the office.

When DeFoor won over his Democratic opponent by around 3 percentage points four years ago, he became the first person of color to hold the office in its history.

DeFoor’s responsibilities have since included oversight of more than 9,000 entities receiving state funds. The Republican said his office conducts around 3,700 audits per year.

DeFoor said he was especially proud of his office’s late August report revealing that the state Department of Human Services had failed to catch about $7 million in taxpayer funds improperly collected by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the groups that act as middlemen between state Medicaid administrators and pharmacies.

DeFoor’s office focused on the PBM PerformRx, which helps administer prescription drugs for more than 2.8 million Pennsylvanians.

Regulators said PerformRX overcharged health administrators for more than what they ultimately reimbursed pharmacies to stock the drugs and then pocketed the difference — a practice called “spread pricing” that is banned in Pennsylvania and that DeFoor’s office said hurts independent pharmacies.

Speaking after an appearance at the Community College of Philadelphia last week — where he was finishing a whistle-stop tour encouraging students to enroll in a career-development program sponsored by the auditor general’s office — DeFoor described staffing as one of the major challenges facing his office.

The auditor general’s office is meant to have around 1,000 employees, but DeFoor said it has closer to 390 after a wave of retirements by senior employees that began during the pandemic.

That has led DeFoor and his office to “streamline” the auditing process, he said, relying more heavily on auditing software and switching to paperless audits, and other modern auditing procedures.

“You hear us being referred to as fiscal watchdog — I never liked that term,” DeFoor said. “I like advocate, because we’re an advocate for the taxpayer.”

Kenyatta was one of the youngest people and the first openly LGBTQ person of color to serve in the General Assembly when he was elected in 2018, as well as the first to run for a U.S. Senate seat when he challenged John Fetterman in the 2022 primary.

A fierce advocate for progressive values, Kenyatta has cast himself as a reformer who would champion working families should he be elected auditor general. At the same time, Kenyatta is seeking reelection to his state seat.

One of Kenyatta‘s major proposals for the auditor general’s office is the creation of a Bureau of Labor and Worker Protections that would investigate wage theft and union busting, and the Democratic candidate has called for more transparent audits on nonprofit health-care organizations and long-term care providers.

Kenyatta has also called to return annual school compliance audits to the auditor general — the Department of Education has conducted them since 2022 — even selling a “Brat tee” on his website that advertises for the proposal in the style of pop singer Charli XCX’s hit album cover.

Kenyatta has not held a previous auditing role, and instead touts his experience as a community organizer and three-term lawmaker who understands both the concerns of everyday taxpayers and the intricacies of the $47 billion Harrisburg budget.

“If you find a random person on the street and ask them about their lives, I think they will tell you that there’s a lot that government can be doing better to meet their needs,“ Kenyatta said, ”to make sure as taxpayers, we are all getting a return on our investment we make into the coffers.”

There are stark differences when it comes to how much each candidate has raised in the 2024 cycle.

Campaign finance reports show that in the latest reporting period, DeFoor‘s campaign raised just under $68,000, while Kenyatta’s pulled in just over $491,000 and had outspent DeFoor by more than double his campaign expenditures.

When it comes to the contest itself, DeFoor said he rarely speaks publicly about his opponent.

“I like people to hear my side of the story,” DeFoor said. “But I will say this one thing about the office: You can win an election as auditor general without being an auditor, but how are you going to effectively lead?”

Kenyatta, meanwhile, has attacked what he and fellow Democrats call the “politicization” of the auditor general‘s office under DeFoor, and has questioned both the timing and motivation behind DeFoor’s recent reports.

For example, Kenyatta challenged DeFoor‘s definition of spread pricing in the PBM audit, saying DeFoor had conflated it with transmission fees — a cost of doing business that PBMs typically charge per prescription filled, and one that is legal.

“He is misrepresenting basic definitions,” said Kenyatta, suggesting the audit was timed for release during the election cycle and meant to reflect poorly on the Shapiro administration and its health department. “When you start with a flawed premise, you’re going to get a flawed outcome.”

Kenyatta has also accused DeFoor of bowing to House Republicans and the far-right Freedom Caucus in his recent audit of the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles‘ new automatic voter registration program, a report which DeFoor’s office said is not likely to be completed before election day.

DeFoor, for his part, rejected his opponent’s assertion that the work of his office was influenced by politics; he recently told Spotlight PA that the “impact is all the same” whether PBMs were conducting spread pricing or charging transmission fees.

And more broadly, Kenyatta has drawn attention to DeFoor‘s role as the state’s leading Republican in an election year that is again defined by the candidacy of Donald Trump and the larger MAGA movement; that includes DeFoor’s reported refusal to outright affirm that the 2020 election was fair and accurate, apart from the results of his own race.

DeFoor’s team, in turn, called it “unfortunate” that Kenyatta had introduced national politics into the race.