HARRISBURG, Pa. — Gov. Josh Shapiro is facing questions about whether he tried to help elect a Republican candidate over a member of his own party who had publicly criticized him, after an audio recording of a top labor leader leaked this week alleging that the first-term Democratic governor pushed his union to support the GOP candidate for Pennsylvania treasurer in the 2024 election.

Shapiro swiftly rejected the claim in the recording that he dissuaded the state firefighters’ union from backing Democratic nominee Erin McClelland because of a personal grudge, which was reported by Axios on Sunday.

But his top labor allies elsewhere in the state who have traditionally supported Democratic candidates — including the politically powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 and the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council — also backed the GOP candidate that year, incumbent Treasurer Stacy Garrity. Breaking from tradition, Shapiro did not endorse in the race.

The 2024 clash between Shapiro and McClelland resurfaced this week after Bob Brooks — a Shapiro-backed Democratic candidate seeking to flip the 7th Congressional District in the Lehigh Valley and the leader of the state firefighters’ union — told Lehigh University Democrats at a recent event that his union chose to support Garrity at Shapiro’s direction, Axios reported.

The rift occurred after Shapiro was being considered for Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the presidential election that year. Though most Pennsylvania Democrats lined up to support him, McClelland posted a veiled criticism of Shapiro that she was instead backing North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper for the job.

Brooks said in a statement that he misspoke in the recording, and Shapiro’s campaign rejected Brooks’ remarks as inaccurate.

But the episode is illustrative of the ways Shapiro, a potential 2028 presidential contender running for reelection this year, is known to operate as a careful politician who demands loyalty from his allies.

Two leaders representing Shapiro-backed labor unions that supported Garrity in 2024 said Monday that the governor never asked them to support the GOP candidate for treasurer that year over McClelland. But they said that McClelland’s criticism of Shapiro was part of why they chose to endorse Garrity, in addition to McClelland’s failure to try to gain their support.

“When you went against the governor, you went against us. I don’t think the governor had to call me,” said Ryan Boyer, the business manager of the Philadelphia building trades, the umbrella organization representing 50 local unions, said Monday. “Naturally, when you go against (Shapiro), we question your sanity.”

IBEW Local 98, which recently gave more than $500,000 toward Shapiro’s reelection campaign, also endorsed Garrity in 2024 over McClelland. That choice was made independently and without Shapiro’s input, said Tom Lepera, the union’s political director.

“Ms. McClelland did not engage Local 98 in a meaningful way during the endorsement process,” Lepera said, adding that McClelland did not even recognize a Local 98 leader while seated next to them at a Harris campaign event.

“Our decisions are our own and are not directed by outside political figures,” Lepera added.

A union endorsement can help a candidate tap into the votes of Pennsylvania’s 620,000 union members or help them build up their campaign war chest.

McClelland, who had run unsuccessfully for Congress twice and won the Democratic primary for treasurer in an upset over the state party-backed choice, criticized Shapiro during the whirlwind 2024 veepstakes. In a post on X, she endorsed Cooper to be Harris’ pick instead of Shapiro, writing that she wanted Harris to run with someone “that’s secure enough to be second under a woman, is content to be VP & won’t undermine the President to maneuver his own election & doesn’t sweep sexual harassment under the rug.”

McClelland was referring to a 2023 sexual harassment scandal in Shapiro’s office. Shapiro’s top legislative liaison was accused of sexual harassment, and the governor’s office quietly reached a settlement with the accuser for $295,000. The liaison, Mike Vereb, did not resign until months after an internal complaint was filed, records show, and Shapiro was criticized for his administration’s handling of the scandal.

McClelland had failed to garner support from the state party even before her critical comments. She raised little money — less than $200,000, including a $100,000 personal loan to her campaign — compared with Garrity’s more than $1 million war chest.

Afterward, she said she would not have done anything differently and wants the Democratic Party to stand up for its platform when elected officials fail to uphold it, pointing to Shapiro’s support for school vouchers, which teachers’ unions widely oppose, or his administration’s efforts to cover up the Vereb scandal.

“The biggest thing this has brought back is how intolerant a significant part of the Democratic Party leadership is for any subversive speech,” McClelland said Monday. “My loyalty to my party is not based on any elected official. I believe in the party platform. ... I stand behind criticisms of any elected official in my party that violates our platform.”

McClelland lost in November 2024 — alongside the Shapiro-backed Democratic candidates for auditor general and attorney general — as Republicans swept all three state row offices for the first time, in the red-wave election led by President Donald Trump’s reelection.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Shapiro said the governor is focused on “winning and electing Democrats up and down the ballot this November.”

“Rehashing the 2024 elections doesn’t do anything to improve Pennsylvanians’ lives or elect more Democrats,” his campaign spokesperson Manuel Bonder said.

Shapiro last year took a more hands-on role in the state Democratic Party. His former top aide is now its executive director and his handpicked and longtime ally Eugene DePasquale is chair. He has contributed more than $900,000 toward the state party since October.

Garrity went on to win reelection, securing a record number of votes for a candidate for statewide office, and is now challenging Shapiro for governor. As she prepared to launch her gubernatorial bid to run against Shapiro, she did not receive a warm reception from some of the unions that backed her in 2024.

Boyer, a Shapiro ally who in 2024 called Garrity “the real deal,” said that in running for governor, Garrity would never get the support of the Philadelphia building trades again, "not even for county dog catcher."

On Monday, a spokesperson for Garrity said that Shapiro was right in 2024 to encourage labor unions to support her reelection and that the latest conflict is illustrative of as the “craven, political demagogue we’ve always known him to be.”

McClelland, for her part, is no longer working in politics and has taken a job in human resources but says she plans to “enthusiastically” vote for Lt. Gov. Austin Davis in November — even though she doesn’t like Shapiro, his running mate.

Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run on a single ticket in the general election, so McClelland will in effect be voting for Shapiro.

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