Five candidates are on the ballot for Pennsylvania Treasurer, including incumbent Stacy Garrity (R).
The State Treasurer, a four-year position, manages the Commonwealth’s $150 billion in state funds through their investments. They can also create saving programs to support Pennsylvanians.
Here’s how candidates are presenting themselves and where they stand on common student concerns like foreign investments and higher education support.
Stacy Garrity (R- Incumbent)
Garrity defeated former Treasurer Joe Torsella (D) in 2021 and became the first Republican to hold the position in 16 years.
Garrity has since expanded the 529 College and Career Savings Program, a program her campaign said aided 30,000 families in saving for their children’s future higher education costs.
She introduced a tax credit for employers who contributed to their employee’s savings and waived the fees for account holders each year. Garrity cites this initiative as saving families 11 million dollars in her first term.
After running on a platform that emphasized transparency, Garrity created the Transparency Portal for the state treasury, which allows anyone to compare revenue and budget details between years.
“As your Treasurer, Stacy knows how important it is to meet people where they are and offer real solutions, not just empty rhetoric,” Garrity’s campaign website reads. “With a second term ahead, she will keep that promise one county at a time.”
Following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Garrity increased the state’s investment in Israel Bonds by $20 million, drawing criticism from pro-Palestine supporters who wished to see the government divest from the country as the war continues.
Erin McClelland (D)
McClelland spent much of her career as a counselor for mental health and substance abuse before entering politics and learning logistics and policy work. She beat the Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate, Ryan Bizzarro, in the 2024 primaries.
She has not received Gov. Josh Shapiro’s endorsement, having stated she would fight against signing school vouchers — a way for public funding to be used to pay private school tuitions — in court if elected. She also later spoke against his potential vice presidency.
McClelland wants to use the power of the state treasurer to pressure companies to maintain an ethical workforce and supply chain, moving away from inhumane domestic and overseas working conditions.
She also said she should prioritize domestic investments and disagreed with Garrity’s investment in Israel.
“It’s time we elect a responsible, honest-broker to oversee the Commonwealth’s Treasury who is committed to rebuilding our state’s supply chain with transparency and integrity and managing our taxpayer’s coffers with diligence and accountability,” McClelland wrote on her campaign website.
Chris Foster (Forward Party)
Foster, a once lifelong democrat, started running this year as a candidate for the Forward Party, a party formed in 2021 by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang to promote centrism.
Foster’s priorities include government transparency in its finances and increasing Pennsylvanians’ financial literacy. He also believes in being apolitical through legislative or executive branch disputes and remaining neutral in social issues when controlling the treasury.
“I firmly believe that every Pennsylvanian deserves to have confidence and trust in their state government, particularly when it comes to matters as critical as fiscal management,” Foster wrote on his campaign website.
If Foster receives 2% of the vote, the Forward Party will be recognized as an official party in Pennsylvania.
Nick Ciesielski (L)
Ciesielski, a mechanical engineer and current chairman for Westmoreland County’s Libertarian Party, believes that much of Pennsylvania’s day-to-day problems stem from the consequences of government overreach following the pandemic — rising inflation and the devaluation of the dollar.
“[We’re] in this spiral where something’s got to give and it’s not going to be pretty,” Ciesielski told The Temple News. “At least having this forethought and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to be responsible and work with a plan for this for some of these eventualities here’ [will] set it up so that at the very least, hopefully, Pennsylvania is able to mitigate the negative consequences.”
For Ciesielski and many Libertarians, this comes from investments in alternative currencies like Bitcoin and gold to offset inflation. One of his promises is to help Pennsylvanians use Bitcoin in everyday transactions to provide financial freedom.
Ciesielski otherwise believes in privatization rather than many public services, including education, due to the lack of market forces motivating positive change.
Troy Bowman (Constitution Party)
Bowman currently serves as treasurer for Pennsylvania’s Constitution Party, a religious right-wing party dedicated to interpreting the Constitution as intended by the founding fathers, according to the party website.
While Bowman has run for local office before, this is his first run for state office — and he was meant to be a placeholder for the party’s spot on the ballot until they found someone who wanted to run, he told The Temple News.
Bowman hasn’t created any long-term plans for state treasurer or a campaign website. He wants to bring attention to his party instead, he said.
True to his party, he finds foreign spending and government financial aid in areas like student debt forgiveness unconstitutional.
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