Leftist politicians evidently don’t twice before using the bereaved to advance their own agenda.
That has backfired on one of the Democrat Party’s rising stars.
Because this 2024 Democrat sleeper just got called out for a claim about victims’ families in a heinous attack.
Democrat Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is considered a sleeper candidate to replace Joe Biden at the top of the Democrat Party ticket in 2024 should President Joe Biden decide to withdraw from the contest.
But the rising star may have stepped in it big time.
Fresh off of his election in November and rumored to have higher political ambitions, Shapiro is getting criticism for evidently making a whopper of a claim when he used the families of victims in a heinous attack to push a leftist policy.
The governor says he reversed himself and now opposes the death penalty and that his change of heart apparently came from talking to families of victims of the Tree of Life mass shooting.
But it turns out that nine of 11 of the victims’ relatives favor execution if the accused shooter is found guilty.
Five years ago, a gunman opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh during a morning worship service, killing 11 members of the three congregations that met there in what was later deemed to be an antisemitic act.
“A just punishment for those crimes”
Federal prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty for alleged shooter Robert Bowers, who faces a 63-count indictment.
Shapiro was the state’s Attorney General at the time and said while speaking to an activist crowd, “The killer deserved to be put to death. For more than a decade, including when I assumed office as Attorney General, I believed that the death penalty should be reserved for the most heinous crimes – but that it was, indeed, a just punishment for those crimes.”
But now that Shapiro is in office, his true colors are coming out.
He has announced that it’s not enough to simply extend his predecessor Tom Wolf’s moratorium on execution warrants, but will now act to remove the death penalty from Pennsylvania law “for good.”
Shapiro claims the flip-flop will “make our system more fair and more just” and clear his conscience after his son asked him why it’s okay to use death as punishment.
He said, “I’ve spoken to victims, to families, to advocates, and to community leaders. I listened to the members of the Tree of Life community and was blown away by their courage and their fortitude. They told me, that even after all the pain and anguish, they did not want the killer put to death. He should spend the rest of his life in prison they said, but the state should not take his life as punishment for him taking the lives of their loved ones. That moved me. And that’s stayed with me.”
Again, a solid majority of the victims’ relatives disagree with him strongly.
“Don’t tell us how we should feel, what is best for us, what will comfort us”
In a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle in November 2022, relatives of the murdered disagreed strongly with locals who suggested the accused criminal should not die for the massacre.
The families wrote, “These views do not represent the vast majority of the victims’ families; they are, in fact, contrary to our views. The opinion the writer has stated is their opinion and theirs alone. Please don’t tell us how we should feel, what is best for us, what will comfort us and what will bring closure for the victims’ families. You can not and will not speak for us. We, the undersigned, will feel further violated by letting the defendant have the easy way out. His crimes deserve the death penalty.”
Disagreeing with the families and making his own policy is well within Shapiro’s purview, but the evidence suggests he is misrepresenting the concerns and emotions of victims’ families in order to justify a flip-flop.
Unfortunately for Pennsylvanians, they’ll have to wait a few more years to get a chance to pick a governor that will level with the people about what’s really behind his intentions.
Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.
