HARRISBURG — In this year’s lieutenant governor primary, incumbent Democrat Austin Davis is running unopposed while the party-endorsed Republican, attorney Jason Richey, has a long-shot challenger in former UPS executive John Ventre.
The lieutenant governor must formally run in the primary separately from the governor in Pennsylvania, unlike in the majority of other states. A proposed amendment to change that rule in the state’s constitution gained momentum a few years ago, but hasn’t been considered since Democrats took control of the House in 2023.
In practice, gubernatorial candidates can pair up early to campaign with whomever would be their ideal running mate. That was the case with Davis and incumbent Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro during their first run in 2022, and is also the case this year with Richey and assumed GOP nominee Stacy Garrity the state treasurer.
Lieutenant governors frequently serve as additional layers of support, echoing the chief executive’s policy priorities back to constituents, lawmakers, and news outlets.
Davis and Richey, both from the Pittsburgh region, fill a geographic gap for Shapiro and Garrity, who are respectively from Montgomery County outside of Philadelphia and Bradford County in northeast Pennsylvania.
Westmoreland County’s Ventre, who is perhaps best known as a UFO enthusiast and has made several unsuccessful bids for office, is running a self-described anti-establishment campaign in spite of Richey receiving the endorsement of the state GOP.
What does Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor do?
The Pennsylvania Constitution and statutes give lieutenant governors a list of responsibilities. These include presiding over the state Senate, deciding whether to recommend to the governor that prisoners be released as chair of the Board of Pardons, and serving on several other state entities, including the Emergency Management Council, Military Base Community Enhancement Commission, and Local Government Advisory Committee.
The governor can also push their lieutenant toward the center of certain tasks or issues. For example, former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf put John Fetterman in charge of researching and publishing a report on legalizing recreational marijuana. Those extra responsibilities can form the basis for a later run for higher office, as they did for Fetterman’s successful campaign for U.S. Senate in 2022.
A lieutenant governor is also responsible for filling the higher office if the incumbent dies or resigns — which could come into focus heading into 2028, as Shapiro lays the groundwork to potentially run for president. This statute was last used in 2001, when Republican Mark Schweiker took over after GOP Gov. Tom Ridge stepped down to lead the then-new Office of Homeland Security.
The lieutenant governor will earn more than $213,000 in 2026; compensation is adjusted every year to keep pace with the rate of inflation.
Here’s who is running for lieutenant governor this year and how they say they would approach the job.
Democrat Austin Davis
Winning the 2022 election alongside Shapiro, Davis, now 36, became the youngest lieutenant governor in the country and Pennsylvania’s first Black person to hold the role, according to his office.
He has made gun violence prevention one of the central themes of his tenure, advocating for funding related initiatives and chairing the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, which dishes out hundreds of millions of dollars to improve safety in communities and schools.
Davis told Spotlight PA he specifically requested that Shapiro let him lead PCCD so that he could continue the work he’s done throughout his political career. He’s particularly proud of the administration relaunching the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, as well as convincing the General Assembly to increase funds available for the Violence Intervention and Prevention program and to create a grant for after-school programs run by PCCD.
“People want to be safe and feel safe in their communities,” Davis said.
Gun violence prevention is a personal issue for Davis, he told Spotlight PA. He first entered politics at 15, after witnessing a shooting near his home in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKeesport. He launched a youth advisory council for the then-mayor.
He went on to study political science at the University of Pittsburgh as a first-generation college student, and interned in the office of former state Rep. Marc Gergely (D., Allegheny). After graduating in 2012, he joined former Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald’s office as an advisor, and in that role helped start a countywide violence prevention program.
Davis, who lives in West Mifflin Borough, won a 2018 special election in Pennsylvania’s 35th House District to become its first Black representative. He ran on a platform of improving education, transportation, and public safety.
In 2020, he made news after he resigned as vice chair of the Allegheny County Democratic Committee following a dispute with then party Chair Eileen Kelly over who to endorse in two state House races that year. (Under Kelly’s leadership, the party had consistently not endorsed younger, more progressive candidates, including now-U.S. Rep. Summer Lee.)
Davis said he stepped down because the party leadership was “rudderless” and he wanted to focus on his job as a state legislator.
“We just were diametrically opposed in terms of vision for the future of the county,” he said.
Davis knew Shapiro while the former worked for Fitzgerald and the latter was a Montgomery County commissioner. He said the two also worked on legislation when he was a lawmaker and Shapiro was attorney general, following the death of George Floyd in 2020.
“We had an initial conversation and I said that I was thinking about running for lieutenant governor, but I only wanted to run for lieutenant governor if he wanted me to be his lieutenant governor,” Davis said. After a five-hour dinner, Shapiro asked him to be his running mate, the lieutenant governor recalled.
In office, Davis has also worked to increase funding for hospital-based violence intervention programs and to enable the Board of Pardons to accept online applications.
Davis said he and Shapiro have been “governing partners” during their first terms, and that they often speak multiple times a day about policy.
“I think it has benefited Pennsylvania to have the two leaders at the top who are working together to get things done, to be squarely focused on the problems of Pennsylvania,” Davis said.
Davis already had time to mull what it would be like to step in as governor in 2024, when Shapiro was being vetted as a potential vice presidential candidate by Kamala Harris. At the time, Davis said he was ready to take over in Harrisburg should Shapiro go to Washington. He told Spotlight PA he remains ready to take the reins if Shapiro leaves office for any reason.
“I think we have governed in a way that I feel fully engaged in the operations of the commonwealth,” Davis said. “And if that opportunity arised, we'd be ready to step up and carry out our constitutional duties.”
In 2024, Davis elevated his own national status by chairing the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association from 2024 to 2025. He also spoke at the Democratic National Convention that year in Chicago.
Davis is married to Blayre Holmes Davis, who works for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they have a daughter. Davis frequently refers to being a father when he makes the case for policies like paid parental leave.
His latest campaign finance reports show Davis had nearly $2 million as of March 30, but Shapiro’s campaign will carry the bulk of their cash.
Republican Jason Richey
Richey, 54, is a construction, real estate, and commercial law attorney at Pittsburgh-based multinational law firm K&L Gates, where he has worked for almost three decades. He became a partner there in 2005.
In his pitch to become lieutenant governor, Richey mostly leans on his experience litigating energy-related cases. He told PCN in an interview earlier this year that he’d work as a governing partner with Garrity “from day one” to expand Pennsylvania’s infrastructure to extract and “take the natural gas all over the world” with the help of private industry.
Regarding one of his direct responsibilities — chairing the state Board of Pardons — Richey told news outlet Broad + Liberty that whether a person committed an act of violence would serve as a “guiding principle” to his approach. He noted he would view every case individually.
“If you’re dealing with repeated violent behavior, those are not the kinds of cases where I would be inclined to support a pardon or commutation,” he said. “Public safety has to come first.”
Richey mounted a bid for governor in the 2022 race, but withdrew his candidacy before the primary. He ran on a 12-point policy platform that included shrinking the size and costs of state government, increasing access to alternatives to traditional public school, and eliminating Pennsylvania’s flat 3.07% income tax.
Richey told PCN that “all the reasons” he ran for governor are still issues this year, and that he would specifically continue to advocate for cutting the state’s income tax if he and Garrity win. He did not confirm whether it would be part of his and Garrity’s policy platform.
“I absolutely hate income tax,” Richey said, arguing it penalizes people for working and that he favors sales or transfer taxes because they also apply to people visiting Pennsylvania.
Richey said in 2021 he would repeal the state’s no-excuse mail ballot law and pass legislation to require voters to show a form of identification every time they cast a ballot.
After backing out of his gubernatorial bid, Richey endorsed former U.S. Attorney William McSwain before state Sen. Doug Mastriano went on to win the party’s nomination that year.
Following his exit from the race, Richey got some media coverage for reimbursing himself $150,000 he had loaned his campaign — money it would not have had without an injection from a political action committee supporting McSwain, after Richey had endorsed him. At the time, Richey told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he shared “the same principles and values” as the political action committee and “earned their financial support to run for office in the future.”
In 2025, Richey was elected chair of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County. He guided its committees through that year’s election, which saw Democrats largely outperform past elections due in part to pushback on federal policies.
It wasn’t until a reporter called Richey to ask whether he was on Garrity’s shortlist as potential running mates that he considered running, he told PCN. Garrity then asked him formally, according to Richey, and U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) urged him to embrace the call.
“I knew this is an important election, and if everyone thought that I brought that strength to the ticket — both as an outsider and someone that has private market experience — I thought, ‘Let's do it,’” Richey told PCN.
Pittsburgh-based consultant firm ColdSpark is working for the Garrity-Richey ticket this year, as they did with McCormick’s 2024 U.S. Senate bid.
Richey was a union worker in a steel mill while pursuing his law degree at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, according to his campaign. Before that, he obtained a bachelor's degree in political science and economics from Allegheny College, where he was an NCAA Academic All-American wrestler.
He graduated from Hopewell High School. His father was a mechanic, and his mother taught and coached basketball at Aliquippa Junior/Senior High School.
Richey is married to a nurse practitioner, Melissa, and has three children (all of whom are collegiate wrestlers, according to Richey).
Between two political action committees, Richey had more than $50,000 in the bank for his lieutenant governor bid as of March 30. Garrity’s fundraising likely better represents the ticket’s cash-on-hand.
Republican John Ventre
Without Garrity’s or the state GOP’s endorsement — and no money in the bank as of the latest disclosures filed in April — Ventre, 69, will likely struggle to pose a significant challenge to Richey.
Ventre told Spotlight PA this month that he oversaw security, crisis management, and public affairs at UPS for more than thirty years in six states, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.
He has never held public office, though he ran twice for commissioner of Westmoreland County and once for governor in 2022.
He’s also an author whose novels cover topics including fictional accounts of UFO sightings, prophecies, and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ventre has appeared on several television series through his former role as the Pennsylvania director of the national Mutual UFO Network, including Anderson Cooper’s talk show in 2012. He’s still involved in that world, and served as host of the annual Pittsburgh UFO Conference this month.
“What I want to get is the anti-endorsement vote,” Ventre told Spotlight PA, noting that he is seeking to win over Republican voters who align closely with President Donald Trump. To court them, Ventre said he is actively meeting with grassroots “patriot groups” around the commonwealth, though he declined to share any specifics about the organizations.
He said he has enough personal wealth to self-fund a lieutenant governor campaign, but declined to share how much money he would be willing to spend.
Ventre’s platform outlines a range of conservative policies that he would advocate for as lieutenant governor. Many of those, Ventre told Spotlight PA, would require a Republican trifecta in Harrisburg to even be considered because they would likely have no buy-in from Democrats.
These include a statewide government hiring freeze for noncritical positions, time limits on welfare access, and a pledge to eliminate one-third of school administrator roles. Ventre is also leaning on his security background to argue that he is qualified to run the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Council.
Ventre is a New York native who moved to Westmoreland County nearly 30 years ago. He has one daughter, one son, and five grandchildren.
He holds an associate degree in criminal justice from the State University of New York at Farmingdale.
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