Michael Coyne Turzai is an American politician and former Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives who served as Speaker of the House. He is from Allegheny County and represented the 28th legislative district between 2001 and 2020. His district included the municipalities of Pine Township, Marshall Township, Bradford Woods, Franklin Park, and McCandless. Turzai served as the House Majority Leader from 2011 until 2015, and was elected Speaker in January 2015. He was a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2018 until he suspended his campaign in February 2018. He resigned from his House seat in 2020; after leaving office, he became general counsel for Peoples Gas, a subsidiary of Essential Utilities, a major contributor to his campaigns and PACs.

The 2018 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2018, to elect the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, concurrently with the election of Pennsylvania's Class I U.S. Senate seat, as well as elections to the United States House of Representatives and various local elections. Incumbent Governor Tom Wolf won re-election to a second term by a double-digit margin, defeating Republican challenger Scott Wagner and two third-party candidates from the Green Party, Paul Glover and Libertarian Party, Ken Krawchuk. The primary elections were held on May 15. This was the only Democratic-held governorship up for election in 2018 in a state Donald Trump won in the 2016 presidential election.