Last December 31st, Josh Shapiro and his wife, Lori, tired from a late flight back from L.A. the night before, were being, the young legislator recalls, “a lame married couple. We were going to get Chinese food and watch the ball drop.” After collecting their New Year’s takeout, the couple was driving through an Abington intersection when Shapiro remembered a moment a few years before, when he had been standing on that very corner alongside campaign volunteers, waving SHAPIRO ’04 placards. One passing motorist who gave a thumbs-up was driving a car with a state legislator’s license plate. When Shapiro got back to his campaign headquarters, he had looked it up. It belonged to Dennis O’Brien, a veteran Republican rep.

Remembering O’Brien, Shapiro considered the daunting political puzzle he and his fellow Democrats were now facing in Harrisburg. And something in his brain clicked.