Editor’s note: Billy Penn is posting analyses of the Pa. Governor’s Race candidates by looking at 10 pressing issues for Pennsylvania millennials. Our first piece looked at their stands on marijuana. Up today: privatizing state liquor sales.
Gov. Tom Corbett (R):
One of incumbent Tom Corbett’s major pledges when he was first running for office was liquor privatization. He had pledged to take Pennsylvania out of the retail wine and liquor business. The governor came close to making this pledge in 2013 but the bill ultimately did not pass through the legislature. Corbett said he is still having conversations on liquor privatization, but nothing concrete’s really happened.
Corbett on his own failure to get liquor privatization done:
Challenger Tom Wolf (D):
Tom Wolf says he’s opposed to privatizing the state’s sales of wine and liquor. He told the York Daily Record in April that the distribution of wine and liquor in Pennsylvania can be improved, but that privatization is not the means to his ideal end. Modernization does not equal privatization, he says. Whatever that means.
In his message to YDR, Wolf also hit on the time he spent as the Secretary of Revenue and how he strengthened the Pennsylvania Lottery system without actually privatizing it. He’s reiterated on a consistent basis that as governor, he would block efforts to privatize the system that he claims provides many “good-paying, middle-class jobs.”
