Philadelphia Congresswoman To Run For Governor
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Allyson Schwartz is the only Pennsylvania woman in the U.S. Congress -- now she wants to become the state's first woman governor.
"I think people are very ready," Schwartz said. "I feel very ready to run and to be governor and so do many men and women across the state."
Schwartz -- a democrat -- knows she will have competition from lots of others in the democratic primary next spring.
"Tom Corbett is very vulnerable," she said. "People want to go after him, so that's the message there. They see a governor who is not leading our state in the way he should."
But the Philadelphia congresswoman -- who served 14 years as a state senator in Harrisburg -- says she brings unique experience to the governor's office.
"So what I offer is a breadth of experience and skills and knowledge of the state and commitment to the state that no one else has in this race," Schwatz said.
Her top priorities?
"Education, jobs and really getting something done," she says.
Unlike Corbett, Schwartz supports a severance tax on Marcellus shale drilling to fund education -- and the former head of a women's health clinic in Philadelphia has a strong pro-choice record on abortion.
"I am pro-choice, and so are most Pennsylvanians," she said. "And they believe very strongly, as I do, that it is not the government's decision, that it is a private personal decision."
Schwartz also supports same-sex marriage -- and says her career in public service was motivated by her mother.
"My mother is a Holocaust survivor -- came to this country at the age of 16 by herself having lost her family," Schwartz said. "And I understood in both explicit and very implicit ways that what government does or doesn't do, or what communities do, whether they stand up against discrimination and hate, whether they stand up for each other, really matters in our lives -- and it's really quite personal for me."
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