A beautiful 30-by-40 foot swimming pool

At what used to be the LG’s mansion.

The pool at the Lieutenant Governor’s mansion in Harrisburg.

I’m not really a big fan of the idea that getting elected to public office means you get to live lavishly on the taxpayer’s dime, in some mansion away from the people you represent.

That’s why I am the only Lieutenant Governor in the history of Pennsylvania to *reject* living in a huge estate with a chef, gardener, and pool paid, saving taxpayers as much as $400,000 every year. And in late 2019 the Commonwealth turned the property over to the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs to support veterans and their families.

Pennsylvania does not owe me or my family a staffed mansion to live in. The supreme honor and privilege of serving as LG is many, many multiples more than enough.

Gisele and I chose to raise our kids and keep our residence, an old car dealership across the street from Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill in Braddock, instead. Still, we have always maintained that if *our* children were welcome to swim in that beautiful 30-by-40 foot pool, so should every other child…

Kids from the community using the pool!

…So in June 2019, we opened up the pool to the children of Pennsylvania! 😎

Now the pool gets put to good use every summer by public groups and nonprofits. Children with little to no access to a swimming pool can now learn how to swim in a beautiful pool at a historic estate.

The ugly truth is that swimming has a painful legacy of racial segregation. Gisele and I are committed to equity in all spaces. It is our hope that making this pool available to everyone will help end that disparity and allow every kid in Pennsylvania to have a fun + cool summer.

Equity everywhere is worth fighting for. And I *promise* that as a United States Senator, I will fight for equity in your community as if it were my very own.