William Scranton III

William Scranton III
Scranton in October 2005
26th Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania
In office January 16, 1979 – January 20, 1987
Governor	Dick Thornburgh
Preceded by	Ernest Kline
Succeeded by	Mark Singel
Personal details
Born	William Worthington Scranton III (1947-07-20) July 20, 1947 (age 69) Scranton, Pennsylvania
Political party	Republican
Alma mater	Yale University

William Worthington Scranton III (born July 20, 1947) served as the 26th lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987 in the administration of Governor Richard Thornburgh. He is the son of the late Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, and a member of the wealthy and politically influential Scranton family, the founders of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Scranton was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of the late Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton and the late First Lady of Pennsylvania Mary Scranton. He attended Yale University. After college he became the editor of a local newspaper in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. In 1970, he went to Europe to study Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation, and became a lifelong practitioner of the Transcendental Meditation technique. 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 member of the Transcendental Meditation movement, as his top aide in Harrisburg. In 1982, he was unanimously elected as Chairman of the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors.