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OK, when I saw this photo of Scott Wagner, the CEO and chairman of DeSantis's Super PAC, busy working on a 1,000 piece puzzle in the critical days leading up to the Iowa Caucus (this photo is from January 9), I just had to laugh. It's not like he was working on this during lunch breaks either. He apparently spent hours a day working on it. But even if it was only during breaks, the optics of it is just terrible. This is such a humiliating and sad way for a once promising presidential campaign to end. And yes, it...

Iowa was supposed to be make-or-break for Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor essentially moved his campaign there late last year, and Never Back Down, his allied super PAC, spent tens of millions of dollars knocking on doors in the state. “We’re going to win Iowa,” DeSantis declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Dec. 2. But in the week before the all-important caucuses, Scott Wagner, the recently installed head of the super PAC, was doing something that aides found puzzling: He was literally doing a puzzle. In the headquarters of Never Back Down in West Des Moines, Iowa, Wagner was,...

Leaders of Ron DeSantis' Never Back Down super PAC met privately last Tuesday to hash out a strategy for fighting Nikki Haley's rise. Instead, two of them nearly came to blows with each other. The infighting represents an escalation in the long-running war between Never Back Down's professional political operatives and DeSantis’ Tallahassee-based inner circle over who is to blame for the governor’s failure to compete effectively with frontrunner Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. And, after tempers flared at last week's meeting, three close DeSantis allies — David Dewhirst, Jeff Aaron and Scott Ross — launched a second super...

Former York County state Senator Scott Wagner, never gentle about his politics, is getting some national attention for his latest visual haymaker: A set of highway billboards showing a gun-toting President Joe Biden dressed as an Afghan fighter, beside the slogan “Making the Taliban Great Again!” The billboards, Wagner told WGAL News 8 and the York Daily Record this week, are his way of expressing frustration and anger at America’s rushed withdrawal from its 20-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, with the forces of the reactionary Islamic Taliban -whom American-led coalition forces pushed out of power in 2001 - rushing...

With the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, legal analysts suggest that he could be a deciding vote in overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and that has ratcheted up interest in the abortion issue in Pennsylvania's gubernatorial contest. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf makes no bones about it. He wants no part of anything that would further restrict a women's access to abortion than what is permitted now in state law. He has vetoed or threatened to veto bills that would have done just that. "This issue is the woman's right to choose. It's about the choices...

It was a surreal moment in the middle of a surreal news cycle. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) and his Republican challenger, Scott Wagner, sat on stage, their faces frozen and their hands clasped. And Alex Trebek, the “Jeopardy!” host and the moderator of Monday night’s debate, let loose, joking that the only thing with a lower approval rating than the Pennsylvania legislature was the Catholic Church. Polite laughter from the audience quickly turned to boos. Trebek, dressed in a purple flowered tie with a matching pocket square, looked out at the crowd watching the two candidates face off at...

The Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor invested more than $600,000 of his campaign donation into a brokerage account. The amount shows up as a $631,050 loss on his latest campaign finance report, but Wagner has gained more than $840,000 throughout his rare investment practice during the 2018 election cycle.

Pennsylvania Primary Election Results By THE NEW YORK TIMES

HARRISBURG, Pa. >> Pennsylvania voters have a lot to think about when they hit the polls for Tuesday’s primary, including a hotly contested Republican primary for governor. Also on the card are a five-way race for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, a Republican primary to pick who will take on Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey in the fall, House races in the wake of the major redistricting case and a host of open seats in the Legislature. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and elections officials emphasize that the redistricting decision did not change the polling...

ITTSBURGH — About four years after having to overcome negative ads from his own party to win a state Senate seat, Scott Wagner was first to speak at a major GOP committee dinner as the party's endorsed candidate for the state's highest office. Aboard a chartered plane from Harrisburg on his way to the Republican Committee for Allegheny County's annual Lincoln Day Dinner, Wagner said he started building relationships with Republicans statewide after his historic 2014 write-in campaign. The Spring Garden Township resident and owner of Penn Waste was forced to run as a write-in after the state party endorsed...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's Republican Party on Saturday endorsed candidates who are closely identified with President Donald Trump to run in contested primaries to challenge the state's two leading Democrats, Gov. Tom Wolf and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey. The endorsements of gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner and Senate candidate Lou Barletta came a month before the deadline to file paperwork to get on the May 15 primary election ballot. The endorsements at the Republican State Committee's winter meeting were expected after both men performed well at regional caucus straw votes in recent weeks and come with the party's financial support...

Of four candidates seeking the republican nomination to run for Governor of Pennsylvania, Senator Scott Wagner of York has lead in all but one of the straw polls in party caucuses across the state. The northwest and southwest caucuses met on Saturday morning. They were the last two to weigh in. In a close vote 30 to 28, the southwest supported Senator Wagner over House Speaker Mike Turzai. Turzai who is from the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley, was edged out in his home region. The northwest caucus, meeting in Clarion, turned out to be the outlier for the state. Their...

Conservative news sources were shaken up for a few days this summer when several outlets picked up Rolling Stone Magazine’s story on Tim Gill, “Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBTQ Rights Movement.” The greatest concern was with Gill’s pledge to “punish the wicked” by passing laws in swing and Southern states that criminalize people who believe we are created male and female and that marriage is the union of man and woman. Yet after a brief period of fixation on this quote, the story has retreated into news cycle history. And so, since the circus surrounding Alabama’s Senate race is...

State Sen. Scott Wagner, R-Spring Garden Township, intends to run for governor of Pennsylvania, he said Thursday. He intends to write "a significant seven figure check" to his campaign, from $1 million to just shy of $10 million. He said he has not yet decided whether that money will be a loan to a committee that could be paid back to him or a direct gift. He said that contribution will not require him to sell part of Penn Waste, a waste and recycling company he owns. Wagner, who has been publicly considering a run for months, plans to make...

Republican State Senatorial candidate Scott Wagner, running a write-in campaign, beat candidates backed by both the Democratic and the GOP establishments in a Pennsylvania special election last week. Wagner’s victory over the establishment standard-bearers for the State’s 28th Senate district represents the first time a write-in candidate has ever won a seat in the Pennsylvania Senate. Wagner, a businessman from York County, won an astonishing 48 percent of the vote with his write-in campaign. His GOP-endorsed opponent, State Representative Ron Miller, took 27 percent of the vote and Linda Small, the Democratic establishment pick, received 26 percent. Local news reports...

First, it was a Florida congressional race. Now? A Pennsylvania special election for the state Senate. The Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania scores a major win — and yes, the winner says he heard about Obamacare. Scott Wagner is a Pennsylvania state Senator this morning. It wasn’t supposed to happen. In a stunning upset, the York County businessman, taking a stand against the state’s political establishment of both parties, made state history by winning a special election for the Pennsylvania state Senate — in a write-in landslide, defeating both the Republican and Democrat nominees. Wagner captured 48 percent of the vote....

<p>YORK, Pa. (AP) — After a bruising and expensive campaign, voters in a York County state Senate district on Tuesday backed a conservative trash company executive's maverick write-in bid over the Republican party's hand-picked candidate, a veteran state representative.</p> <p>Penn Waste Inc. President Scott Wagner claimed victory in a special election to finish the term of retired Sen. Mike Waugh, who resigned in January and was named executive director of the state Farm Show Complex and Expo Center.</p>

March 19, 2014 Tea Partier wins write-in race for Pennsylvania state Senate seat Mark Tapscott York is a modest little city in Southern Pennsylvania not too far from Baltimore and right in the heart of Dutch country. It's not the sort of place where political revolutions are found. But Republican state Senate nominee Ron Miller may think differently this morning because he just lost a special election to a write-in Tea Party candidate, Scott Wagner. "With 100 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595, or 47.7 percent, to Miller's 5,920, or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of...

In what appears to be an unexpected victory for a conservative businessman who had made s point of bucking his own party, Republican Scott Wagner is presumed to have won a write-in campaign to defeat party nominee Ron Miller for an open seat in the state Senate. The closely watched, hotly contested face-off ended in disappointment for the Republican mainstay and a first major victory for the tea party in York County. With 100 percent of the precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595 or 47.7 percent, to Miller's 5,920 or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of New Freeedom...