John Fetterman: the giant Democrat who upset the polls in Pennsylvania

John Fetterman has defied the polls to hand the Democrats a crucial midterms victory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Fetterman’s win over celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz flipped the Republican-held Senate seat as the two parties battled for control of the chamber. The campaign had centred around Fetterman’s health after he suffered a stroke in May that “impacted his ability to speak and process the sound of others’ speech”, The Guardian��s Adam Gabbatt reported from Pittsburgh.

Oz had launched “needlessly cruel attacks” against his 6ft 8in-tall Democrat rival, said Jeremy Stahl at Slate. But Fetterman also “overcame legitimate questions” about his health and ability to do the job.

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The would-be senator triumphed by presenting himself “as a blue-collar Democrat”, said Gabbatt. While Oz fended off queries about his links to Pennsylvania after living in New Jersey for decades, Fetterman’s strategy centred on “searching for votes in ‘ruby red’ parts” of the state, said Richard Hall in The Independent.

Campaigning on the slogan “Every County, Every Vote”, Fetterman narrowed the margins by “talking about those towns that the Democrat Party left behind”.

‘Working-class persona’

Fetterman was born on 15 August 1969 in Pennsylvania, and was raised in the southern city of York by Republican-voting parents.

Despite presenting a “working-class persona, shaped in part by his signature outfit of gym shorts and a hoodie, Fetterman grew up wealthy”, said The Philadelphia Inquirer. He told CNN in 2015 that he was born to then-teenage parents who were “extremely poor”, although his father went on to become a successful insurance executive.

After graduating from high school, Fetterman got a bachelor’s degree at Albright College, also his father’s alma mater, and then did a master’s in business administration at the University of Connecticut.

He told CNN that he “sleepwalked” through his much of his early adulthood, until a friend was killed in a car accident while en route to pick him up in 1993. Fetterman later recalled that “I started to look at the world differently, and I wanted to give back”.

He had been “poised” to join the family insurance business, said The Philadelphia Inquirer, but instead moving to Pittsburgh to work for AmeriCorps, a federal agency dedicated to national service and volunteerism. He then attended Harvard University to get a master’s in public policy, before returning to Pittsburgh to set up a programme “helping kids get their GEDs (General Educational Development)” in the borough of Braddock, said CNN.

Fetterman made his first foray into politics came in 2005, after two of his students were shot and killed. He won his bid to become mayor of Braddock by one vote, before going on to win re-election “by comfortable margins” in 2009 and 2013, the news site reported.

His first run for Senate was in 2016. “Little-known and underfunded, he finished third in the Democratic primary,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer. But in 2018 he made a successful run for lieutenant governor, and “used the job, which comes with limited power, to advocate for marijuana legalisation and criminal justice reform”.

A ‘progressive crusader’?

Fetterman is “unmistakable”, towering above his peers and sporting “a goatee and tattoos”, said Vox. He has also sought to stand out from his political rivals by billing himself “as a true progressive”.

His main issues, said Time, are “raising the minimum wage, legalising marijuana” and “expanding health care access”. In his only debate with Oz before the elections, Fetterman also vowed to “fight to re-establish” Roe v. Wade, adding that the “choice for abortion belongs with you and your doctor”.

Yet Fetterman didn’t run as a “progressive crusader or policy wonk”, the magazine continued. He is also “pro-policing, pro–community policing, pro–funding the police”. And despite having previously described fracking as an “environmental abomination”, he said during his Senate campaign that ensuring the “energy security” of the US had to take priority.

Fetterman also addressed questions about his health during his sole debate with his Republican rival, claiming that Oz “never let him forget” his stroke.

But while “it knocked me down”, Fetterman said, “I’m going to keep coming back up” in order to help “everyone in Pennsylvania that ever got knocked down that needs to get back up”.