Scott Wagner

He represented the 28th district in the Pennsylvania State Senate.

Scott R. Wagner (born September 21, 1955) is an American businessman and politician from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Wagner graduated from Dallastown Area High School in 1973.

He then spent one semester at Williamsport Area Community College (now Pennsylvania College of Technology), but left school to pursue business ventures.

Wagner bought his first plot of land for $8,500 at age 19, selling it two years later for a $4,000 profit.

He then had several successful business ventures including a laundromat and ski shop, as well as buying a number of rental buildings.

He also worked as a bail bondsman.

In 1985, Wagner co-founded the waste management company York Waste Disposal, a company which made $40 million a year, and which he sold in 1997.

He then started Penn Waste in 2000, a company with 400 employees in 2018.

The company has received over 30 violations and citations from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection over sixteen years, which Wagner claims have been unfair and overreaching (his company picks up garbage from 180,000 homes).

Wagner ran in a March 2014 special election for the 28th district in the Pennsylvania Senate.

When Ron Miller, an incumbent member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, declared his intentions to run for the seat, Wagner charged the Republican Party with cronyism.

Wagner withdrew his name from consideration, but remained a candidate for the regularly scheduled primary election in May 2014.

The York County Republicans selected Miller as their nominee, and Wagner chose to run in the special election as a write-in candidate against Miller and Linda Small, the Democratic Party nominee.

Wagner ran on a fiscal conservative platform.

He ran as an outsider, accusing party leaders of rigging the system against him, and became the first write-in candidate to win election to the Pennsylvania State Senate in history.

In the election, Wagner received 10,595 votes (47.7%), Miller received 5,920 votes (26.6%) and Small received 5,704 votes (25.7%).

Turnout was less than 14% of all registered voters in the district.

He was sworn in on April 2, 2014.

In office, Wagner moved the General Assembly in a more fiscally conservative direction.

He led efforts to replace Republican Dominic F. Pileggi as Senate majority leader and to install plaques under the Capitol portraits of Senate and House leaders with criminal convictions.

In 2014, he compared public sector unions to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin, later apologizing for the "unfortunate analogy."

Wagner used his own money in campaigns to help Republicans win seats in various parts of the state, and as Chairman of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, he led Senate Republicans to achieve a 34-16 supermajority in the 2016 Pennsylvania Senate election.

As Chairman of the Senate Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Wagner ushered the passage of a bill from the committee that would have established protections from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation based on "sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression."

It was the first time in eleven years of introducing such legislation that it passed a committee, though it did not advance to a vote by the full Senate.

Working with Democratic senator Anthony H. Williams of Philadelphia, Wagner introduced Clean Slate legislation to automatically seal non-violent misdemeanor conviction records after someone remains crime-free for ten years.

Wagner and Williams' bill passed the Senate unanimously, and is nearly identical to the House's version which ultimately became law.

In the state Senate, Wagner supported natural gas drilling on state lands and called for reducing regulations on the oil and gas industry.

Wagner inaccurately asserted in March 2017 that climate change is the result of Earth moving closer to the Sun and from greater body heat emanating from a greater number of humans; this debunked claim is contrary to the scientific consensus on climate change.

In December 2017, Wagner voted in favor of a bill in the state legislature that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Governor Wolf vetoed the bill.

Wagner later came out in support of a U.S. House bill that would ban abortion as soon as the fetus has a heartbeat.

Wagner has also cosponsored bills that would prevent the use of state funds for non-abortion services, such as birth control and cancer screening, at Planned Parenthood.

Wagner has been critical of labor unions, and has stated that he supports right-to-work legislation.

He was the Republican nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania in the 2018 election, losing by more than 800,000 votes to incumbent Democrat Tom Wolf.

Wagner is from Spring Garden Township in York County, Pennsylvania.

He was raised on a farm.

Wagner resigned from the Senate in June 2018 after winning the Republican nomination for governor.

In December 2019, Wagner sold Penn Waste to the Canadian company Waste Connections.

Wagner also owns three other companies, including a trucking company called KBS Trucking.