Former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta announces bid for Pennsylvania governor
(The Center Square) – Lou Barletta, a former congressman from Pennsylvania and Hazleton mayor, said Monday he will seek the Republican nomination for governor in 2022.
Barletta represented Pennsylvania’s 11th congressional district for four terms after drawing national attention over immigration policies he endorsed in the Luzerne County city during his tenure as mayor between 2000 and 2010. He left Congress in 2019 after a failed attempt to unseat Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., despite an endorsement from then-President Donald Trump.
Barletta told the The Associated Press on Monday he’d welcome Trump’s support still.
“I would love his endorsement and I’m going to try to earn it,” he said.
Barletta’s platform centers on rebuilding the economy after 14 months of pandemic restrictions. He criticized Gov. Tom Wolf’s “one-size-fits-all” approach as “disastrous” for small businesses, nursing homes and the state’s vaccination rollout alike.
“The solutions aren’t complicated,” he said on Twitter. “More than anything, we need someone to fight for you. So, let’s do it. Let’s take back Pennsylvania, together.”
He also reiterated his bullish stance on undocumented workers and said it remains an issue of public safety, health and job protection.
The rhetoric hearkens back to the decade Barletta served as mayor of Hazleton. The City Council made national headlines for adopting ordinances that punished businesses and landlords for employing or renting to undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court struck the measures down in 2014.
Barletta was also one of several prominent GOP members to question the results of the 2020 election and allege widespread fraud via the state’s new mail-in voting law.
He told the AP on Monday he still supports repealing the 2019 law that expanded mail-in voting to most residents with no excuse necessary “because it encourages the chances” of fraud.
Legislative Republicans remain intent on reforming the state’s election laws after concluding 10 investigative hearings into the issues that arose out of the 2020 general election.
Lawmakers are not, however, considering repealing the mail-in voting law as part of the review, but do want to tighten registration deadlines to ease the burden on county officials.
Other recommendations suggest legislation to address shortcomings in the existing election audit process, an outdated system for registering and maintaining voters rolls and statutory ambiguities that give the Department of State too much leeway in dictating election guidance – the latter of which Republicans insist resulted in a disparate application of the law in the November election.
Barletta is the third Republican candidate to enter the race behind Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale and Erie restaurateur Jason Monn, according to a report from the Erie Times-News.
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