Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf ’77 urged the next generation of politicians to lead with “virtue” at a Rockefeller Center for Public Policy event on Nov. 6.
“The salvation of our political system and the nation is the rediscovery of virtue,” he said.
Government professor and Rockefeller Center director Jason Barabas ’93 moderated the conversation, which approximately 100 community members attended. The discussion was part of the speaker series “Law and Democracy: the United States at 250,” which celebrates the 250-year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Wolf began by addressing Democratic victories in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, the New York City mayoral race and a ballot referendum in California last week. He said the newly elected Democrats “represent a generational shift.”
Candidates “looked different in terms of their politics,” he said. “They were actually out there trying to do things that were aimed at helping actual people, not interests, not some abstract set of goals.”
Wolf said in an interview with The Dartmouth before the event that the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence should be a time to “rediscover our true values” as a nation.
Wolf added that his time at Dartmouth taught him the importance of values in building community.
“The thing that I took away from Dartmouth was this sort of sense of community and the values that you need to make a community work,” he said. “You need a sense of decency and civility and honesty, integrity and fairness. Those things actually matter.”
In his talk, Wolf said he “accomplished a lot,” including expanding public education funding and Medicaid, despite facing a Republican majority in both chambers of the Pennsylvania legislature.
“What the eight years proved to me was that virtue does have a place,” he said. “Hold on to your deepest principles, don’t sacrifice them at all unless you see something better and actually get a lot of good things done.”
Wolf, who entered politics in 2013 after running his family’s company, said he has a “very different” perspective on politics from the “traditional political view.” He said he believes politics should be an “exchange of ideas” rather than simply “policy output.”
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Wolf said that during his tenure, he vetoed more bills “than any governor since the 1970s” protecting minority groups’ rights.
“A lot of [the vetos] had to do with women’s rights and with LGBTQ+ issues, which to me were non-negotiable,” Wolf said. “I’d just sit down and [say], ‘We’re not going to go down that road.’”
In an interview with The Dartmouth, audience member and Pennsylvania-native Vincent Castillo ’28 said it was meaningful to hear from the state’s former governor.
“In a state like Pennsylvania, you need to kind of acknowledge both sides,” he said. “Just hearing his perspective on how he did that is so impactful and it really sets down a bridge for how we can involve ourselves in any political endeavors.”
Audience member Victoria Kartashev ’29 said that the discussion was “memorable.”
“The governor was very optimistic, very hopeful for the future, especially about young people being the future,” she said.
