William Scranton, III

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William Worthington Scranton, III (born July 20, 1947 in Scranton, Pennsylvania) served as the Republican lieutenant governor of the state of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987 in the administration of Governor Richard Thornburgh. He is the son of former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton and a member of the wealthy and politically influential Scranton family, the founders of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

After attending Yale University, he became the editor of a local newspaper in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. He then became president and managing editor of the Greenstreet News Company. He entered politics as a member of the Republican State Committee in 1976. In 1978, he won the Republican primary for lieutenant governor and later that year became the youngest person ever elected lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania.

His dual role as Chairman of the Governor's Energy Council and Chairman of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Council put him at the center of the Three Mile Island crisis in 1979. As Lieutenant Governor, Scranton hired Nat Goldhaber – a close associate of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – as his top aide in Harrisburg. In 1982, he was unanimously elected as Chairman of the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors.

After his stint as lieutenant governor, Scranton ran for Governor of Pennsylvania in 1986 against Robert P. Casey. The race was virtually tied until five days before election day when Casey's media consultants, led by a young James Carville, launched the now-infamous "guru" ad. This television advertisement portrayed Scranton as having been a regular drug user in the 1960s and mocked Scranton's interest in transcendental meditation and his ties to the Maharishi. The image of Scranton as a "long haired, dope- smoking hippie" is seen by political observers as having tipped the scales against Scranton in socially conservative Pennsylvania. Casey went on to win the election by a narrow margin.

After losing the 1986 election, Scranton exited politics for a while and held a number of positions in the private sector in California. He returned to Pennsylvania in 1994 to manage his family's interests.

On October 17, 2005, Scranton formally announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2006. After it became clear that Scranton would not win the Pennsylvania Republican Party endorsement, his campaign called for Pennsylvania change to an "open primary" election.

After the dismissal of two prior campaign managers over strategy issues, in January 2006 Scranton fired his third campaign manager, Jim Seif, after Seif referred to leading Scranton opponent Lynn Swann, an African American, as a "rich white guy" during a television interview. In February 2006, Scranton announced that he was withdrawing from the race for Republican nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania.

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