Milton Shapp

In 1966, he sought the Democratic nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania. The party in Pennsylvania was deeply divided that year and the party organization endorsed Robert P. Casey for the office. Shapp's large personal fortune allowed him to run an independent campaign, and he capitalized on an anti-establishment mood among Democrats and won the Democratic primary by about 50,000 votes with a slogan portraying him as "The Man Against The Machine."

At the time, Shapp was heavily involved in unsuccessfully trying to stop the merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad with the New York Central. He invested millions of dollars of his own money into the effort, traveling throughout Pennsylvania to convince local officials to oppose the merger. He pushed the issue into the federal courts and testified against the proposed merger in front of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The issue was prominent during his first run for governor in 1966. In the process, he made several enemies. Stuart T. Saunders, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, opposed Shapp at every turn. Friendly with the Lyndon Johnson administration, Saunders influenced Washington Democrats to sabotage the Shapp campaign.

Walter Annenberg, owner and publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and major shareholder of the Pennsylvania Railroad, used the pages of The Inquirer to cast doubt on Shapp's candidacy. The opposition from Annenberg-owned media and the Democratic political establishment helped contribute to Shapp's narrow loss that year to Republican Raymond P. Shafer.

During Shapp's time in office, he solved a financial crisis by instituting Pennsylvania's flat, no-deductions income tax. He also signed into law the bill creating the Pennsylvania Lottery and instituted major reforms for the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The Governor oversaw new consumer rights legislation, welfare reform, and insurance reform including the controversial decision to enact no-fault insurance legislation in the state. In the wake of the Watergate crisis, he established a sweeping Sunshine Law for the state, the most comprehensive of any state at the time. He also faced a massive recovery effort after Hurricane Agnes caused widespread flooding in the state causing the death of 48 Pennsylvanians. The flooding was so bad and so rapid that Governor Shapp and his wife, Muriel, had to be rescued from the gubernatorial mansion in Harrisburg by boat as flood waters from the Susquehanna River inundated the building.[5][6]

During the Shafer gubernatorial administration, the Commonwealth Constitution had been amended to change the permitted lengths of governors's administrations from one term to the present-day maximum of two consecutive terms at a time, with at least one term required between such gubernatorial administrations.

As Shapp was not term-limited, he successfully sought re-election as governor, winning by a large majority over his Republican opponent, Drew Lewis, in the election of 1974.[7]

He set his sights on the White House and ran unsuccessfully for the 1976 Democratic nomination for president, but failed to carry even his home state of Pennsylvania in the primary elections, and dropped out after an 89-day campaign.[8][2] After that defeat, he settled into a lame-duck term as governor, enacting no further significant reforms. He opposed capital punishment and vetoed an attempt to restore it in Pennsylvania in 1974. The legislature, however, overrode the veto and reinstated the death penalty.[9]