Stacy Garrity leans on military experience, veterans issues in uphill Pa. governor’s race against Josh Shapiro

State treasurer and Republican nominee for governor Stacy Garrity held a rally Thursday at the Whitemarsh Valley Event Center in Fort Washington, where she spoke on issues related to veterans.

“Pennsylvania’s home to 700,000 veterans, and they deserve a governor who will fight for them as hard as they fought for us,” she said.

At the midterm campaign event, Garrity laid out what she called “common sense proposals” on “how we can support our veterans.”

Garrity served for three decades in the U.S. Army Reserve, retiring with the rank of colonel. Her military career included three deployments in support of Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. She received two Bronze Stars and the Legion of Merit.

During her deployment, Garrity served at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, where she handled detainee processing at the prison. She was also responsible for family visitations and interpreters, and she served as a Red Cross liaison. While Abu Ghraib received a lot of attention as a notorious torture site during the early years of the war in Iraq, Garrity was dubbed “The Angel of the Desert” because of her attention to prisoners’ well-being at Bucca.

Garrity has called her military career “the honor of my lifetime.”

“Had I not hit my mandatory retirement date, I would not be standing here talking to you as a state treasurer and the nominee for governor because I would still be serving,” she said at an event in Port Richmond last month.

She added that commitment has transferred to her current role.

“I have one goal and one goal in mind when I wake up every day,” she said. “How do I make the lives of Pennsylvanians better? My only ambition is to serve.”

Garrity has made outreach to veterans a recurring part of her campaign for governor, holding events around Pennsylvania, including a roundtable in Erie, a rally in Bucks County and another campaign stop in Shamokin. At those stops, she discussed proposals to help veterans find jobs, obtain housing and access health care, while highlighting her own military service.

At the For Washington event, Matthew Giacobbe, a Philadelphia veteran who served in the Air Force for more than three decades, said, “She’s one of us.”

“We try and go to as many American Legions and VFWs because that’s where the group of people that support her are,” said Giacobbe, who now works with the campaign. “We have a ton of veterans all throughout Pennsylvania supporting us.”