Because Shapp was a Democrat, the papers and the GOP hounded him. Shapp had been a businessman, and tried to run the State like a business, Under Shapp it was possible to go to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia and get your License plates, you did NOT have to use the mail OR drive to Harrisburg (Thornburg cut out that service as a cost cutting move, remember this is all PRE-INTERNET, it was a huge connivance).
Shapp did what business claim to do, provide services, Shapp was able to do so for he had the revenue to provide such services, for he passed what the GOP had long opposes, a State Income Tax. For crime of passing not once but twice (The first one, a graduated Income Tax, was ruled to violate the STATE Constitution by the State Supreme Court, so Shapp then pushed through the present fixed Income tax system).
Let me Quote Wikipedia on Shapp:
Shapp first entered the political scene in 1960 by campaigning for John F. Kennedy. Shapp is “credited with promoting the idea that eventually led to the creation of the Peace Corps.”After Kennedy was elected President Shapp served as an advisor to the Peace Corps<2> as well as consultant to the Secretary of Commerce.
In 1966, he sought the Democratic nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania. The party in Pennsylvania was deeply divided that year and the party officially 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."
During the time, Shapp was heavily involved in 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, travelling 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. Additionally, 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.
Governor of Pennsylvania
As the 1970 state elections approached, Shafer was term-limited under existing Pennsylvania law and could not run for re-election. Furthermore, a fiscal crisis during his term caused his popularity to be at a low point hurting Republican chances of retaining the office. Shapp again sought the Democratic nomination and again defeated Robert P. Casey to win the Democratic nomination. Of his nemeses from the last election, Walter Annenberg had sold the Inquirer to Knight Newspapers, Inc. a year earlier prior to his appointment as Ambassador to the United Kingdom, while Stuart Saunders had vanished from the political scene as Penn Central entered bankruptcy in 1970. This time Shapp was elected Governor of Pennsylvania over Republican Raymond J. Broderick, the incumbent Lieutenant Governor and later a well-respected federal judge, by over 500,000 votes.
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 governor’s mansion in Harrisburg by boat as flood waters from the Susquehanna River inundated the building. He was carried from the executive mansion to the boat on the back of a State Trooper. WHP-TV covered this evacuation...
His administration was plagued with numerous scandals during his tenure in the governor's mansion. Although generally regarded as personally honest and never personally implicated in any of the scandals, he was heavily criticized for not doing enough to prevent corruption among his subordinates in the state executive branch.
Governor Shapp 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.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_ShappI remember those "Scandals", the GOP controlled Legislature made a big deal out of them in 1978 (The last Year Shapp was Governor, Shapp could NOT run that year, Pennsylvania adopted a two term limit for Governors in the 1960s). AS soon as Thornburg won the election, the "Investigations" into the Scandals ended, without anything new being added (it was clear the "Investigation" was politically motivated for the Legislature and the State GOP were even heavier into the worse scandals, the problems with the Old Highway Department, for any GOP to look to long into those scandals).
As to Shapp's opposition to the Merger of the New York Central and PEnnsylvania Railroad, he was correct. the merger should NEVER have been permitted, it was called two drunks holding onto each other to stand up, instead of getting off the alcohol. The choice, even economists of the time, pushed for (And Shapp appears to have supported) was to merge both the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central with Coal railroads instead of each other. In the 1990s, when Conrail was sold and broken up, between the B&O railroad (Which itself was the survivor of the merger of one of the Coal Railroads, the C&O and the original B&O Railroad) and Norfolk and Southern (the other Coal railroad). In effect what the ICC did in the 1960s AGAINST what economist and most business men wanted but what the executive of what the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads wanted was shown to have been WRONG. Notice the problem was NOT the ICC, but the ICC going along with what the Pennsylvanian and New York Central Railroad wanted. If the ICC would have done its job, and told the executives their plan was untenable, the ICC would have saved the US the cost of forming Conrail (Please note, Conrail was an efficiently run Government Owned Railway, I opposed it breakup for the problems of the merger of the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad had been solved by then, fortunately enough people remembered what happened in the 1960s and was able to avoid making another mistake i.e. instead of giving Conrail away to Norfolk and Southern, the US Department of Transportation had to divide Conrail up between two railroads willing to pay top dollar fir it.
Sorry, I like Shapp and consider him the Best Governor of Pennsylvania since Pinchot (I can NOT claim the best governor ever, for I have little knowledge of the Governors of Pennsylvania before Pinchot).
For more on Pinchot, First Chief of the US Forest Service, 28th Governor of Pennsylvania (Serving two terms, 1923=1927 and 1931-1935, Pinchot could NOT succeed himself, but could run, and did run and win, a Second term, with a different Governor serving between his two terms):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_PinchotOne last fact why I think Highly of Shapp, while a good Jew, he gave every state Worker Good Friday off, something every Governor since his time has refused. The rationale was simple, if 10% of more of your work force is going to miss work that day, close shop it is NOT worth even opening the doors. When ever you lose 10% of more of your work force for any reason, that loss is to much for the rest of the work force to make up, in effect you end up wasting the whole day. It is a wasted day, why be open?
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