John Fetterman

It's a chance for Democrats to find out whether they can arrest the building red wave and their declining White working-class support with a candidate who ...

“At the core of his argument is that he is one of those unique candidates that really forms a connection.” Every seat in the House and a third of the seats in the 100-member Senate are up for election. “It seemed like he would be there for anyone, in shorts and a hoodie.” I’m not sweating over it,” said J.B. Poersch, the president of the Senate Majority PAC, a group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “Our challenge is the economy. “I just kind of like him,” said Ruth Barsotti, 68, who owns a wine-selling business with her husband. He has not made a public appearance since the stroke and planned to miss his election-night rally. He added that Republicans in the race were “too dangerous, too craven, and too extreme to represent Pennsylvania.” “I’m well on my way to a full recovery.” They point to his success in 2018 when he was on the statewide ballot and won in six counties that Trump had carried two years earlier. Fetterman rose to national prominence as the mayor of a faded manufacturing town, Braddock, where he starred in a 2010 Levi’s ad about America’s industrial rebirth. But he has also found ways to distinguish himself from the rest of his button-upped party. “I have seen people describe Fetterman as the left’s version of Donald Trump,” Brabender said.

John Fetterman, lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic Senate candidate, speaks during a campaign event in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, on April 30, 2022.

And I can't think of a Democrat running nationally that's running on anything functionally different in that regard." Fetterman has been in the hospital ever since, and he underwent a nearly three-hour surgery on Tuesday to implant a pacemaker that includes a defibrillator. Fetterman served as mayor of Braddock, a small town near Pittsburgh, from 2006 to 2019, when he became lieutenant governor. They're not going to make their decision based on how we dress. phoned her husband to congratulate him after his win, but the candidate was asleep after his surgery hours earlier. He was found to have had a stroke.

Just a dude” who won Pennsylvania's Democratic nomination for the Senate — days after suffering a stroke.

Mr. Fetterman has repeatedly described himself as a progressive in the past, but in the Senate race he did not seek the left-wing mantle. In that role, he maintained an active presence around the state, building name recognition that played an important role in his primary victory. But he attracted just as much attention for his style, and some saw him as skilled at connecting with blue-collar voters. And he gained fresh prominence with a broader range of voters as a cable-television fixture when Pennsylvania’s 2020 votes were being counted. “He’s a very believable candidate for the working class.” The party’s vulnerability had already been highlighted when Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico suffered a stroke in January. “I’m just doing my thing,” he said in an interview last week. “That’s something he’s been able to build on.” The lieutenant governor lives in Braddock with his three children and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the second lady of Pennsylvania, who has embraced the acronym “SLOP” and who, like Mr. Fetterman, has an active social media presence. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 but gained an enthusiastic following, and went on to defeat an incumbent to win his party’s nomination for lieutenant governor in 2018. Then a stroke upended his plans. Mr. Fetterman, the 6-foot-8, hoodie-wearing former mayor of Braddock, Pa., was not a favorite of the party establishment, but he electrified some progressive voters and a broader slice of the Democratic electorate that embraced his blunt-spoken, accessible style and welcomed his pledges to fight aggressively for party priorities in Washington.

The strategy: Take his populist economic message all over Pennsylvania, including the reddest areas of the ultra-competitive commonwealth. Lt. Gov.

“At the same time he also needs to hold on to those recent gains we’ve made among more moderate voters in areas like the Philadelphia suburbs.” “Too many people in this commonwealth and this country are hurting,” she said. “He’s done a great job at building an extraordinary base, not just here in Pennsylvania, that’s excited to get out and get the vote for him. So it’s going to be the Republican nominee’s job to point that out and to show that.” He’s someone who has a different kind of connection to voters,” Fetterman strategist Rebecca Katz said in an interview. “The ads write themselves when you are running against John Fetterman,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Chris Hartline. “He has embraced the far left on just about every issue. Fetterman is as idiosyncratic in substance as he is in style. But I think his base respects him for saying it.” Fetterman doesn’t yet know which Republican candidate he’ll face in the Nov. 8 election, when the Democratic Party faces a grim landscape and strong political headwinds. He has demonstrated the fundraising prowess to run any kind of campaign he wants. In his campaign, he has stressed bread-and-butter issues. … That’s what we did then, and that’s what we’ll do now.”

The 6-foot-8 goateed Senate candidate prevailed in the Democratic primary less on the strength of detailed policy proposals than on vibes.

The technocratic administrative whiz Jerry Brown’s lifelong ambition to become president was derailed in part by the impression some voters formed of him as a hippy-dippy “Governor Moonbeam.” (It might, however, have helped him dominate liberal California politics while pursuing a centrist, pragmatic course.) Many voters were apparently convinced that Hillary Clinton was a wild-eyed feminist radical, even though her policies and personality pointed to moderation. In 2008, Barack Obama managed to become a heartthrob to young and progressive voters even though his actual platform was studiously moderate. Fetterman is clearly more liberal than Lamb. (A third major candidate, state Senator Malcolm Kenyatta, came in behind Lamb.) He backed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and supports a more progressive slate of policies than Lamb, a consummate moderate. The campaign has been a study in the power of vibes. Looking and sounding like a Yinzer roughneck is handy when many of the voters you need to win do too. Fetterman easily won today’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, and will run in November in a race that could decide control of the chamber.

Pennsylvania has an open Senate seat for the first time in 12 years. Fetterman's Republican opponent was not yet decided. The GOP primary was close going ...

It's time to deal them back in, and electing John to the United States Senate would be a big step forward for Pennsylvania's working people." Fetterman's win was expected despite the fact that he suffered a stroke last weekend and was not able to attend the last swing of campaign events. Current Republican Sen. Pat Toomey will resign at the end of his term. On Tuesday his campaign announced he was about to undergo a procedure to implant a pacemaker. The Republican winner and Fetterman will face off in November for the first open Senate seat in Pennsylvania in a dozen years. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, easily won the state's Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, according to a race call by The Associated Press, but the Republican race appeared headed for a recount.

John Fetterman, lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic senate candidate, center, speaks during a campaign event in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, U.S., on ...

I think it has more to do with people who define progressive by the results you achieve and people who define progressive by what you say on Twitter, regardless of the results you achieve. “I don’t think it’s as simple as people in the media have a tendency to turn it into moderate versus progressive…. They think that he is the antidote to Trump,” he told me. “I think we’re gonna be victorious because I believe deep down that the Democratic Party still gets that at a base level, which is why we chose Joe Biden as the nominee in 2020 and why we’re gonna succeed in 2022,” Lamb said. His pitch: I won’t be another Manchin in the Senate. Fetterman’s campaign has described him as a “Democrat with a backbone”—perhaps a nod to Republicans’ well-worn dismissal of Joe Biden as spineless. Notably, Lamb initially buddied up to Joe Manchin—a “moderate” if there ever was one—before seemingly distancing himself after the West Virginia senator scuttled a series of critical Democratic priorities.

His quirky personal and political appeal is different from that of a typical Pennsylvania Democrat.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Mr. Fetterman’s one glaring departure from progressive causes, and a nod to Pennsylvania realpolitik, is that he does not support a ban on fracking, the environmentally questionable hydraulic extraction of natural gas. Mr. Fetterman’s most worrisome vulnerability is his appeal to his party’s most dependable voting bloc: Black voters in Philadelphia and the state’s other urban centers, the places where any Democrat running statewide must mine the largest trove of votes. And if he has a problem with Black voters, he will have to solve it. Mr. Fetterman’s challenge stems in large part from a 2013 incident in Braddock, when he used his shotgun to stop a Black jogger and detained him until police arrived. Mr. Fetterman’s background, his attention to the state’s rural communities and his manner — the work clothes, a straightforward speaking style — could make some difference. A signature issue has been the legalization of marijuana — “legal weed,” as he calls it. He vows to conduct a “67-county campaign” — the whole of Pennsylvania. He has flown a flag displaying cannabis leaves from the official lieutenant governor’s office, alongside a rainbow-colored L.G.B.T.Q. banner. But he did only marginally better than Hillary Clinton four years earlier, cutting the margins by a couple of percentage points but hardly reversing the trend of Democrats being routed in the smaller counties. In the winning Fetterman model, he narrows the massive margins that have been run up by Republicans. (His dogs, Levi and Artie, have their own Twitter account and more than 25,000 followers.) It can sometimes seem that he skirts the line between being a traditional candidate and an internet influencer.

John Fetterman, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, NBC News projects.

For all the candidates, issues and important dates that voters should know about in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, go to NBC10's Decision 2022 page. He beat U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb despite a strong slate of endorsements across Pennsylvania for Lamb, who is considered a moderate liberal. Fetterman, one of the standard bearers for the progressive movement of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party, will face off against the Republican nominee in the November general election.

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman had a pacemaker implanted on Tuesday afternoon, just hours before polls were set to close in the U.S. Senate primary.

Fetterman’s campaign announced on Sunday that he’d had a stroke on Friday, after his weekend schedule was cleared without explanation. “John continues to improve every day, and he is still on track for a full recovery.” The announcement that Fetterman would have the procedure came just hours before polls were set to close in Pennsylvania, where he has had a sizable lead in the polls to win the Democratic nomination in the state’s U.S. Senate primary.

Fetterman used his "outsider" appeal to tap into a growing populist electorate in Pennsylvania and ran a campaign focused on voters.

But it has said that doctors reversed the stroke in time to prevent any cognitive damage and that Fetterman is expected to make a full recovery. Fetterman, who was then Braddock’s mayor, has long defended his actions, saying he heard gunfire nearby and made a split-second decision to act in what he thought was an “active shooter situation.” “John Fetterman is trying to rebrand himself from a ‘true progressive’ to ‘just a Democrat’ as he goes head-to-head against the Republican nominee in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race,” the group said. While he hassaid he would support “Medicare for All,” Fetterman has also said hewould support a more modest plan to help drive down costs and expand coverage. Fetterman came in with the highest name recognition thanks to his time as mayor of Braddock and lieutenant governor. As returns rolled in, Fetterman was in a Lancaster hospital with his father and brother. Fetterman set his campaign up extremely well by being the first Democrat to announce in the race and netting the early cash windfall that followed. In a year when Democrats are expected to struggle, Fetterman’s pitch that he could appeal to a wide base clearly resonated. And his “every county” strategy — combined with a social media campaign and TV ads — blanketed his brand statewide. And while predicted by polls and political observers, his win represents a clear shift away from the more moderate candidates Democratic voters typically favor in Pennsylvania primaries. But more historically, outsiders have often done well in the state’s primaries, including Ed Rendell, Joe Sestak, and even Tom Wolf. John Fetterman didn’t just win in Pennsylvania, he trounced his Democratic Senate primary rivals.

Pennslyvania's Lieutenant Governor and leading Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman has been admitted to Lancaster General Hospital after ...