Raymond Phillip Shafer (1967-1971)
Say what you will about Raymond P. Shafer of Meadville, Pennsylvania, but the man did make his mark in Pennsylvania political lore.
No less than eight lieutenant governors just in my frame of reference through the last half of the 20th century attempted to ascend directly from that office to the governorship. Only Ray Shafer made it. That feat alone guarantees him his place in the state’s political history books.
(For the record, John Fine’s Republican Lieutenant Governor, Lloyd Wood, lost to Democrat George Leader in 1954; Roy Furhman, Leader’s lieutenant governor, and John Morgan Davis, David Lawrence’s lieutenant governor, had designs on the office in 1958 and 1962 respectively, but failed to gain the support of their party leadership to contest for the nomination. Ray Broderick was the Republican nominee to succeed Shafer in 1970, but lost. Lieutenant Governor Ernest P. Kline also lost in a 1978 primary bid to replace Milton Shapp; and Republican William Scranton III in 1986 and Democrat Mark Singel in 1994 won their party’s nominations but lost in the general election.)
It was Ray Shafer’s good political fortune to be selected as Bill Scranton’s running mate for lieutenant governor in 1962. That gave him his political base to run for Governor four years later. It was, however, his political misfortune to have to succeed the highly popular Bill Scranton in the Executive Office in 1966. Scranton was an icon of sorts to Pennsylvania Republicans and, intentionally or not, he cast a very large shadow over Shafer and his new Administration. Shafer succeeding Scranton was like succeeding Joe Paterno as coach at Penn State; or replacing Michael Jordan with the Chicago Bulls; or Ronald Reagan in the White House. Very, very difficult to measure up, indeed.
Publicly and privately, Ray Shafer was a personable fella. The problem was (and it was a perception over which he had little or no control), he simply suffered in contrast with Scranton. House Speaker Matt Ryan put the distinction this way in a conversation I had with him in 2002 about the Governors under whom he had served. Scranton, in Ryan’s words, was “born of the manor,” a patrician, of pedigree upbringing. He brought a luster, an aura, a star quality, if you will, to the Governor’s Office. Shafer, on the other hand, was in Ryan’s words, “one of us,” just a first-term Senator from rather rural Crawford County in northwestern Pennsylvania. If it were not for the fact that he was tapped as Scranton’s running mate, he had in the minds of many Republicans no greater political skills or call on the office than they. In fact, at least three Scranton cabinet members—Attorney General Walter Alessandroni, Secretary of Public Welfare Arlin Adams and Secretary of Internal Affairs John Tabor--were bent on challenging Shafer for the Republican gubernatorial nomination until political realities persuaded them otherwise.
It struck many of us in the press that Shafer and his team were as much aware of the perceptions that were out there as anyone when the new Governor moved almost immediately to distinguish himself from his predecessor. The target of his first public policy objective was major organizational and structural reforms of state government, headlined by the of convening the state’s first Constitutional Convention in almost a century. Scranton toyed publicly with the idea of rewriting the State Constitution of 1874 toward the end of his term, but for reasons of lack of time (remember the limitations of one-term governors), lack of political will or a combination of both, the notion went no further than the discussion stage.
So Shafer set out to succeed in an initiative that Scranton didn’t see through. But the move was not welcomed universally among his Republican allies. His GOP leadership in the General Assembly, most notably House Speaker Ken Lee, demurred publicly and strongly. They counseled against making a Constitutional Convention the first priority of the new Administration. Shafer insisted, however.
It was rare (it still is) for Republicans to air their internal differences, political or policy, in public. When Shafer pressed ahead, the GOP majorities in the House and Senate supported their Governor, albeit most reluctantly. The Convention was convened in 1967.
The Convention drew a star-studded cast of delegates. Bill Scranton (there’s that shadow, again) and a former Democratic gubernatorial hopeful, Robert P. Casey, were elected delegates from Lackawanna County. To emphasize the nonpartisan nature of the gathering, Casey was named vice chairman of the convention; Scranton was named chair of the Judiciary Committee. World famous author James Michener was another prominent delegate from his native Bucks County. And lest we forget, so was another future governor of Pennsylvania, Richard L. Thornburgh, then just at the infant stages of his ambitious political aspirations.
But, as events played out, the most important delegates to the convention were the dozen or so members of the Republican and Democratic leadership of the General Assembly who served by virtue of their legislative positions.
The Shafer tenure could be labeled earnest, but unspectacular. He convened the Constitutional Convention; he successfully advocated a constitutional amendment permitting Governors to serve a second consecutive term (though he, himself, was not eligible); he signed legislation into law eliminating the Department of Internal Affairs as an elective statewide office (replaced by the appointive Department of Community Affairs, later to morph under the Ridge reign into the Department of Community and Economic Development); he signed the bill creating the Department of Environmental Resources; and, though reluctantly, he also signed the Public Employees Collective Bargaining act. The convention, clearly, was his greatest success, but even there he had to live with his legislative critics (most of them Republican) that it was the wrong objective at the wrong time for his new Administration.
Shafer’s one moment of significant national exposure occurred at the 1968 Republican convention in Miami when he was asked to deliver the nominating speech for New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He did it creditably. But, again, unspectacularly.
After the Republican convention and his 15 minutes in the national spotlight, Governor Shafer returned to the State Capital, essentially to finish the remaining year and one-half on his term. It was not a productive time for him or the Commonwealth. The rift that was created with his Republican legislative leadership over his call for a Constitutional Convention two years earlier never quite healed. The tension compounded itself as he entered lame duck status. That denied him the political muscle he needed to keep his legislative troops in the fold because he certainly could not expect any help from his loyal opposition in the Democrat Party.
Raymond Shafer was the only man in modern Pennsylvania history to be elected Governor directly from the office of lieutenant governor. That fact, more than any other, will be his most distinguishing note in the history books of Pennsylvania. He served with a high degree of commitment. He probably deserves better than history likely will afford him. But that’s just the reality of his tenure.