Scott Wagner contributed more than $40,000 to put Tom Corbett into the Governor’s mansion, but the businessman and Republican super donor isn’t pleased with the pace of progress. In an op-ed Friday, Wagner says, “Tom Corbett is not a leader. Pennsylvania has a weak CEO in Tom Corbett.”
Characterizing Corbett as a career attorney with little executive credentials, Wagner wrote that Pennsylvania has a leadership vacuum in the Governor’s office.
“Tom Corbett is not a leader. Pennsylvania has a weak CEO in Tom Corbett. There is nothing else that explains PA Republicans’ lack of achievements while historic reforms have been achieved by Republicans in other states like New Jersey under Chris Christie, Indiana under Mitch Daniels, Florida under Rick Scott, Louisiana under Bobby Jindal, and Wisconsin under Scott Walker,” he wrote. He named right to work, workers’ compensation reform and school choice among his examples.
You can read the scathing full piece here.
Full disclosure: Wagner is an advertiser on PoliticsPA.
Wagner is president of York-based Penn Waste, Inc. He’s given and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans, most notably Sen. Pat Toomey. A staunch conservative, he briefly considered a run for Congress when Rep. Todd Platts retired this year; in 2010 he contributed significantly to Platts’ Republican challenger Mike Smeltzer.
Corbett spokesman Kevin Harley hit back hard against the accusation that the administration was short on accomplishments.
“In the last year and a half, Tom Corbett has closed a $4.2 billion budget deficit, passed two on-time state budgets, saved the unemployment compensation system, passed tort reform, saved the Philadelphia refineries, made strides in securing the first-ever ethane petrochemical plant in the northeastern United States, presided over the first growth in manufacturing jobs in a generation, and overseen an economy with 73,000 new jobs, all without tax increases,” he said.
“Scott Wagner’s inability to see this as progress raises valid questions about his ability to identify leadership, much less lead.”
Corbett has been praised by Republicans for various accomplishments to date. Prominent conservative Grover Norquist even suggested he was a possible candidate for President in 2016 or 2020.
That said, over the past two years there have been murmurs of dissatisfaction from Republican lawmakers and operatives at the administration’s lack of clarity on certain issues.
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20 Responses
Elections have consequences. Please vote this smug, arrogant, slice of rubbish out of office. He can’t go two seconds without bad-mouthing a teacher or Ed Rendell. Divide and conquer, attack the middle class, gerrymander, …rinse and repeat. If it was up to Corbett, we’d all be greeters at Wall Mart-cause THAT’S the goal of this hack…Can’t wait til this guy is one and done!!!! AMEN!
Ummmm, Simon… Got any left? Cause that’s some good stuff you’re taking! Was there a question in your rant?
Yeah! Why aren’t more of us outsourced convict labor for THEIR masters overseas? How DARE we’re behind in our delivery of our liquified shale gas to our best competitors and worst adversaries! Gullible, servile, indentured peon-labor is just another resource, for pyramid building, tag-team kleptocracy Ponzi schemes.
Scott Wagner has more “garbage” in his closet than his business hauls! Rumor has it that he now has some of Toomey’s trash working for him. Someone who was taught a “stern” lesson. (No pun intended)
Please Scott…Run… You wouldn’t believe the kind of records the EPA and DCNR keeps on file!!! Simply amazing!!!
Mary had a little lamb!
Do I hear primary challenge?
If Mr. Wagner is such a successful businessman why, then, did he back the Party bosses vs Sam Rohrer and Daryl Metcalfe?
Scott Wagner is also a RINO. He spends more time criticizing Republicans than Democrats but maybe its not just because he’s a RINO it is because he is a complete imbecile. Scott Wagner should go back to what he knows: hauling human waste and garbage to PA landfills. Everything about Wagner smells like a dump.
WTF “Grover”??? Corbett is presidential timber for 2016???? Um, he wasn’t even invited to speak at the Republican Convention, ya know where the true future contenders all spoke Rubio, Kasich, Christie, Santorum etc. Corbett is toxic. After Obama, McCord, Kane and DePasquale sweep this Nov., the writing will be on the wall for Corbett.
Tom Corbett is the emptiest suit that ever sat in the mansion. Before he was blessed to run for Attorney General by federal convicted felon Bob Asher, he was pushing paper around at the PCCD.
Call it like it is. Corbett was groomed for the job by arch criminal Bob Asher. When a politically corrupt manipulator owns first the Attorney General and then the Governor, you get the predictable result. The Republican party willingly jumped into bed with the felon Asher with its eyes wide open. They deserve what they got. Everything is about Asher expanding his power and funding base for his personal aggrandizement. Corbett is but a tool.
No way Corbett gets re-elected. His name is mud in every corner of the state. Economy sucks. He spends money on new cars for him and his wife while he slashes state programs to the bone. He said he was going to clean up the capitol and it is as corrupt as ever.
And we haven’t even begun to explore Mr Corbetts knowledge of the Penn State scandal, nor how Mr. Corbett cleared the field for Good ol’ Leroys son-in-law. If it looks like a duck… Quacks like a duck… it’s a duck. No matter what functionary Harley is paid to spin.
maybe this election will be a lam duck seccion
Getting rid of Corbett in your primary will require defeating the old Gleason political machine as well.
If you folks want Corbett gone you need to get rid of half of your state committee who keeps the old power broker in power..
Old school people would prefer to hold power in the minority party rather than ceding any personal power to become the majority. The parallel between church and political structures remains eerily the same…group dynamics and the human condition are very predictable.
Corbett’s donors have every right to complain about his lack of leadership skills. This reverberates throughout the caucus.
Many in the gop call him one term Tom, but in some ways that is premature. Who would be a viable candidate to primary him? With the debt problems Pennsylvania has on the horizon over the next decade, finding someone with fiscal credibility to stop the bleeding as Tom has would be a precursor to that happening.
That said, Tom’s response was thin-skinned and reeks of Gleasonianism. He is the Governor and does not need to reply to every negative comment about him. I guess this one stung pretty good!
Corbett is a one termer.
Scott Wagner is just another big money person who wants to grab on to whatever power and control he can. He could care less about you and I. But what he does care about is all of those local trash hauling contracts in our local communities.
Corbett for president? Dream on.
Santorum thought he would be president too.
Corbett hasn’t done enough to take us back to the bad old days when the wealthy treated us peons like filth beneath their feet. no roll backs of workers rights or even any child labor law roll backs.
So, he’s complaining because Corbett is a lesser douche bag