Tom Wolf almost never stayed overnight in the Governor’s Residence most of his eight years leading the state, but Sunday’s firebombing there as the current governor and family slept hit home.
“It really did,” the former governor said in an interview Monday. “But it's not so much what happened at the mansion. It's the assault, potential assault on the governor and his family that just really is heart-wrenching. It should not happen. It just goes without saying. That's not how we do things in Pennsylvania. It's not the way democracy should work. It's not the way our society should work.”
Wolf joined many who condemned the attack and offered words of support for Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family.
The early Sunday attack occurred hours after the Shapiros and friends celebrated the first night of Passover, the holiest of Jewish holidays. The Shapiros were not harmed. They were not near the firebombed rooms and evacuated safely.
The attack added another instance of high-profile violence to an already tumultuous period in state history. Last July, an assassin narrowly missed killing President Donald Trump in Butler. That means in less than a year, someone has tried to kill the nation’s president and Pennsylvania’s governor in the state that birthed the United States.
State police blame the attack on Cody Balmer, 38, of Penbrook, a borough of about 3,200 residents that neighbors Harrisburg. They charged him with attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault, burglary, recklessly endangering another person, terrorism and loitering and prowling at night.
Police said Balmer turned himself in at the state police barracks in Harrisburg. He was hospitalized briefly Monday for reasons unrelated to the incident or his arrest, police said. His mother told PennLive.com her son stopped taking his medication for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and she tried unsuccessfully to get him help in the days before the attack.
An arrest affidavit says Balmer filled Heineken beer bottles with gasoline, scaled a 7-feet-high fence, broke mansion windows with a small sledgehammer and threw flaming “Molotov cocktails” inside.
The affidavit says he expressed hatred for the governor but offers no further specifics. Balmer told police he planned to beat Shapiro with the hammer if he encountered him, according to the affidavit.
Wolf, who commuted to work as governor from his York County home most days, said he doesn’t know how to prevent future incidents.
“All I know is we have to. We cannot resort to this,” Wolf said. “We're not going to survive this as a society ... Violence is not the answer.”
Wolf said he could not recall receiving threats as governor, even though his management of the COVID-19 pandemic produced strong opposition.
“In any case, it's not something that anybody ought to be thinking about at any time,” he said. “We need to be safe. And this is the last thing that should happen.”
Balmer's home was quiet early Monday afternoon. A TV news crew from Philadelphia waited across the street.
Signs of the attack could still be seen from the sidewalk immediately outside the Governor's Residence along North Front Street: boarded up windows and doors, a group of officials gathered outside the badly damaged south wing and a section of iron fence along Geiger Street missing and replaced by chain link where Balmer allegedly scaled. Police removed the top section of the original fence.
Local residents eased past news crews camping out to record video and prepare for live shots.
"I live in this area, and I'm used to fire engines going up and down all the time, and police cars," Midtown Harrisburg resident Kay Patterson said.
She slept through the attack chaos, but learned what happened when she woke up Sunday.
"I thought it was something small. As the day wore on and we got more news, it became clear to me that this was not something small, that this was very deliberate," Patterson said. "And of course, I immediately thought it had anti-semitic overtones."
Patterson also was struck by the fact that Balmer allegedly walked more than an hour to carry out the attack.
"So clearly this was not something he did on the spur of the moment," she said of Balmer.
Michael Richards, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran who lives three blocks away, rolled along a Susquehanna River walkway on his motorized scooter.
"I heard the whole thing, as it happened, live, because I'm up all hours of the night," Richards said.
He has doubts about it being a hate crime, because, in Richards' words, "that guy was too professional."
"Hate crimes are messy," Richards said. "He was in, he was out. He knew exactly what he was doing. That was no hate crime. That was well organized."
State police believe Balmer acted alone.
Either way, Richards - like so many - was left shaking his head.
"Two o'clock in the morning? Who's gonna expect something like that? I mean, this is supposed to be America. We're supposed to be safe," Richards said. "You're not safe anywhere. It's a fallacy."
Former Gov. Ed Rendell told WVIA News he's saddened because he's unsure the Shapiros will ever feel safe living in the residence again.
"And it shouldn't be that way, and it's attached to the bigger problem," Rendell said in a telephone interview. "We have become very, very disoriented in our view towards politics. We can't threaten our opponent with physical harm. We can't carry out those threats."
Rendell said he views Tesla founder Elon Musk as "an idiot" and "harmful," but would never condone trashing Tesla car dealerships.
"People have the right to speak and say what they want, and even if we think it's stupid or they're all wrong, or if their advice is followed, they'll bring about bad consequences," he said. "Our duty is to speak back and write letters and carry signs, go to demonstrations, but it sure isn't to trash their property or threaten them with violence or their family. "
Rendell suggested greater teaching of the way democracies work in schools.
"You've got to get kids understanding in a democracy, you've got ways to make your voice, your opinion heard, and no reason to feel like an outcast and no reason to feel you have to kill your opponent," he said. "You can vote against him and get him out of office."
In an interview, state Sen. Rosemary Brown, a Monroe County Republican, called the attack “absolutely terrible” and “scary.”
Brown acknowledged worrying about her and her family’s security in the current political environment. She called for calm.
“I always say I can't legislate the world and put laws in place that make everything perfect,” Brown said. “But I do think that the environment that we set up, the kind of person each one of us is each and every day, and how we take care of those around us” does matter.
Brown, the chairwoman of the Senate’s Mental Health Caucus, said the attack underscores the need to address mental health issues.
“We're human, and I think that's how we get past this. Just to realize that we have to take care of people who are a harm to themselves or harm to others,” she said.
State Sen. Marty Flynn, a Lackawanna County Democrat and once the target of a robbery on a Harrisburg street, said the attack disgusted and saddened him. Flynn cautioned against assuming too much because so much about Balmer’s motivations remains unknown.
“I don't know if this was religiously motivated, if it was politically motivated,” he said. “Why was this person radicalized to violence like that? It's just scary and disgusting the political climate right now in that sense.”
State Rep. Jim Haddock, D-Luzerne, said violence against someone because they're an elected official is "never justified."
"And in this case, for somebody to put a wife and the children of an elected official at jeopardy speaks volumes for how heinous this crime is," Haddock said. "They could have been killed."
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti expressed sympathy for the Shapiros and pointed to a recent attempt to firebomb state Rep. Alec Ryncavage's local office and an attack that killed a police officer at a York County hospital. People lament tighter security measures at City Hall, but they've become necessary, she said.
"Political violence is becoming too common. We're hearing too many of these instances across the country in these past years," Cognetti said. "That's true not just in county buildings, but in school buildings. It's true in medical buildings. It's true in law firms and private companies. We just are living in a time here in America where there is workplace violence and political violence, and our job is to again, balance access with safety."
In a statement on X, former Gov. Tom Ridge called the attack “terribly upsetting.”
“The images showing the damage to the home we lived in with our children for nearly eight years are heartbreaking,” Ridge said. “All of us should feel safe in our homes, especially when that home is our state’s official residence, which makes this particularly shocking. Whoever is responsible for this attack – to both the Shapiro family and our Commonwealth – must be held to account.”
In his own X post, former Gov. Mark Schweiker called the attack “a despicable act of cowardice” and said he would keep the Shapiros in his prayers.
In a statement, state Supreme Court Justice Debra Todd said she and other justices felt “disbelief and outrage” after the “heinous attack.”
“Acts of violence targeting our communities, neighbors, first responders and public officials are a stark reminder of the need for us to come together to reject hate and stand in solidarity and support for the institutions that unite us as Pennsylvanians,” she said.
In his own X post, Vice President JD Vance thanked God that the Shapiros were unharmed.
“Really disgusting violence, and I hope whoever did it is brought swiftly to justice,” Vance wrote.
