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HARRISBURG — Pennsylvanians will head to the polls on Nov. 5 to choose who they want to serve as their state treasurer for the next four years.
Democrat Erin McClelland will face Republican incumbent Stacy Garrity and third-party candidates.
The state treasurer is one of three elected row officers in the commonwealth, and plays a crucial role in managing state dollars. They can serve a maximum of two four-year terms.
Learn more about McClelland below:
A native of Western Pennsylvania, McClelland graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and Chatham University.
Her career includes a decade and a half in substance abuse and mental health counseling, project managing, and program directing.
McClelland also worked as a process improvement manager with the Institute for Research, Education and Training in Addictions, and founded Arche Wellness, Pennsylvania’s first orthomolecular recovery program for addiction.
“I … ran a small business,” McClelland told Spotlight PA. “I’m the only person in the race that had to make a payroll — [that] has been a defining part of my career and how I look at finance and workers, so that’s important to me.”
McClelland registered Arche Wellness twice — once as a private limited liability company and another time as a nonprofit; they were dissolved in 2015 and 2017, respectively.
According to the nonprofit's financial records, it received $700,000 in funding from the Usher Family Foundation, the charitable endowment of former CEO of U.S. Steel and Pittsburgh magnate Thomas Usher and his wife Sandra Usher.
McClelland later worked as a project manager for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services between 2015 and 2024.
This isn’t her first time running for office. In 2014 and 2016, McClelland won Democratic primaries in races for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 12th District, but lost the general election both times to then-incumbent Republican Keith Rothfus.
On her campaign website, McClelland wrote that being on the ballot alongside Trump in 2016 was instructive and showed her that “the issues of rural and working-class voters [were] ignored by my own party.”
“The 2024 election will test just how committed to good union jobs, economic equality, and global human rights Pennsylvania Democrats really are,” she said in a campaign prospectus.
McClelland has criticized the incumbent treasurer’s support for a Democrat-sponsored bill that would create Keystone Saves, a statewide retirement plan option for employers who otherwise can’t afford to offer one. Pitched as a public-private partnership, it would involve employees contributing to IRA accounts, which would then be managed by a private third-party firm.
While the bill passed the state House this legislative session with bipartisan support — including from state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro (D., Erie), who challenged McClelland during the Democratic primary — McClelland calls it the “George W. Bush Great Recession Starter Kit” and says it creates a “privatized, unregulated, self-directed, non-employer sponsored ‘retirement plan.’”
According to her campaign website, McClelland would “protect our workers and our taxpayers from dangerous, unregulated financial products and scam investments like the Keystone Saves program.”
Citing the Biden administration’s 2021 signing of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), McClelland argues for strengthening the state treasurer’s contract oversight authority. She would require companies in Pennsylvania to verify their supply chains are free of goods from countries with records of human rights abuses and deny them state contracts if they can’t show they’ve cut ties with these countries.
“Ultimately, I’m excited to talk about all of the things that treasurer can do outside the office, not just inside, there’s so much opportunity there,” she told Spotlight PA.
McClelland has said she would not write the check for any school voucher program passed by the legislature unless forced by the state Supreme Court. She argued that she could refuse to pay for the program on “constitutional grounds.”
In response, a spokesperson for Garrity criticized McClelland, saying that “having a Treasurer pick and choose which bills to pay” would be dangerous.
Among McClelland's other proposals is boosting the Treasury’s cybersecurity by having it collect cyberattack data from local municipalities.
McClelland scored an unexpected victory over Bizzarro, the candidate with the party nod, in the primary.
However, she faced some pushback from leadership in the state party after she endorsed North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper over Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro for vice president on social media.
In the post, she referenced choosing Cooper over a candidate that “[swept] sexual harassment under the rug,” which many have interpreted as nodding toward the sexual harassment scandal of Shapiro’s former legislative aide, Mike Vereb, that resulted in Vereb’s resignation.
McClelland had also received criticism for receiving donations and spending money on her campaign before registering her committee with the Pennsylvania Department of State. McClelland said that the issues were due to glitches in the Allegheny County campaign finance filing system. Ultimately, the Department of State found that there were no violations of campaign finance laws.
Endorsements: the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, PA AFL-CIO, AFSCME District Council 13, United Steelworkers District 10, Amalgamated Transit Union Pennsylvania Joint Conference Board, Pennsylvania State Education Association, Great Lakes Building Trades, Planned Parenthood PA PAC, Vote the Ridge, Lehigh Valley for All, AFSCME District Council 47, Action Together NEPA.
>>READ MORE: Your guide to the candidates for treasurer
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