Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor has earned a reputation for being sure-footed in a crisis.

Photo: Josh Shapiro speaks during campaign event in Scranton, Pa., April 16. PHOTO: MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Salena Zito

Wall Street Journal

April 29, 2024 – Lyndora, PA – Gov. Josh Shapiro walks down the labyrinth of narrow concrete stairs and hallways through Cleveland-Cliffs’ Butler Works steel mill in Western Pennsylvania. Reaching the podium, he raises his arm in victory when Jamie Sychak, president of United Auto Workers Local 3303, notes that a feared shutdown of the plant has been averted.

“It shows what is possible when we come together—Democrats and Republicans, union leaders, and CEOs—and go in the same direction,” Mr. Shapiro says. He praises the work the union’s members do at the only domestic mill that produces the grain-oriented electrical steel used to produce distribution transformers. The mill was set for extinction because of a proposed federal rule mandating that manufacturers use amorphous steel instead.

The union and Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves lobbied local, state and federal elected officials, but only after Mr. Shapiro appealed to the White House did the rule change. “They heard us, loud and clear, and they worked with us to revise this final rule,” Mr. Shapiro tells the crowd. Having the president’s ear is a big advantage for a swing-state governor.

Joe Biden carried the Keystone state by 1.1 points in 2020. Four years earlier, Donald Trump won by less than a point. When Mr. Shapiro won the governor’s office in 2022, his margin was nearly 15 points. That was in part because his opponent, state Sen. Doug Mastriano was a weak candidate. But it didn’t hurt that Mr. Shapiro is “so damn talented,” as GOP strategist David Urban puts it. The latest polling by Quinnipiac University shows Mr. Shapiro has a 59% approval rating. Mr. Biden’s figure in Pennsylvania is 39%.

Mr. Shapiro has developed a reputation for being competent, pragmatic and sure-footed in a crisis. “My job is to keep people safe, and my job every day is to get s— done,” he says in an interview. “Particularly in a time of emergency, you need to take control of the scene, you need to assess the damage and what is needed to be done, and then put your team in place to go and do it.”

After the February 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment across the state line in East Palestine, Ohio, spilled a cocktail of hazardous chemicals, the Pennsylvania governor was on the ground in Beaver and Lawrence counties, as well as in Ohio at Gov. Mike DeWine’s invitation, to see firsthand what had happened.

“I’ll never forget,” he says. “I knocked on the door of a home in Darlington Township and the woman in the home invited me in. And obviously they were scared, they were worried about their livestock, and she had also shared with me—and this has stuck with me—she had to leave her home for about two days and in the time she left, she lost a batch of eggs.”

He continues: “That was a huge deal for her, and I had that in mind when, a few days later, I summoned the Norfolk Southern CEO to my office.” Mr. Shapiro demanded that the company pay restitution. “And then I told him I wanted a separate fund to help pay for people’s eggs.” Norfolk Southern agreed to set up a $1 million community relief fund, and the Darlington constituent got her egg money.

In June, a tanker-truck fire destroyed a bridge on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. “All of the experts said this was going to take months to rebuild,” he recalls. He observed that there was a road underneath the bridge. “I said, ‘What if we just fill in that whole area with a bunch of dirt and pave over it?’ ” Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll confirms that’s what they ended up doing, although they used recycled aggregate instead of dirt. Mr. Shapiro convinced the local building trades to work 24/7 and to livestream while they did it, and then the commonwealth’s lawyers devised an emergency order to allow procurement to move quickly. The bridge reopened after 12 days.

“The story,” Mr. Shapiro boasts, is that “we can do big things in America again, and I-95 is Exhibit A of that.”

Mr. Shapiro’s name has arisen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028—or even 2024, if something happens to Mr. Biden. For now, he’s deftly threading the needle of being a loyal partisan in a closely divided state. He says he disagrees with Mr. Biden over policies affecting Pennsylvania, including the pause on liquefied natural-gas exports, which harms Pennsylvanians who earn royalties from fracking on their land. He says he’s told the president that “I don’t like this pause, and I’ve said the pause should be limited and it should be quick.”

Naturally he supports Mr. Biden’s re-election, but he won’t disparage Trump voters—many of whom are also Shapiro voters—by calling them “extreme MAGA Republicans.”

“I might have a different view,” he says, “but I do respect it. And so, if you choose to vote for Donald Trump and Josh Shapiro, I assume you’ve carefully thought about it and you have your rationale and your reason for it. Now, I might try to convince you that Joe Biden’s a better alternative, but I try to do it in a respectful way.”

Ms. Zito is a reporter for the Washington Examiner and a co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.”