The Democrats' Giant Dilemma John Fetterman's blue-collar progressivism has endeared him [View all]

[Demsrule86]

to Pennsylvania voters. Why are so many Democratic leaders opposing his Senate run?

I wanted to post something that would show who Fetterman is...he is running for Senate and I believe has a good shot...currently the front runner. The article is excellent...and I think some reading it will understand why Pennsylvanians love the guy. I lived in PA during his early career. And since I am close to PA (could walk there), I plan to help with the campaign. I am as some know working for Tim Ryan's campaign in Ohio. I don't know if we will win but we have elected moderate clean-shaven types to run for this seat countless times and lost...Time for a change. And I believe Fetterman would be a great Senator and possibly a president one day. Some think this is a basic disagreement in how the party moves forward...I don't disagree. However, I do not believe you can realistically leave the working people of places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and concentrate on cities and minority votes...I think you need both types of voters. I look at the map and you need the rustbelt and will for the foreseeable future. Fetterman has done much to get people out of prison many innocent or serving excessive prison terms...it is all in this article. Fetterman is a great guy and has a great story.

"Fetterman first exploded onto the national scene shortly after he was elected mayor of Braddock, a small, dilapidated town outside Pittsburgh, in 2005. Mayors of 2,000-person boroughs don’t typically receive much attention. But Fetterman had a story: A man who could pass for a Hells Angel and had a Harvard degree was revitalizing a place that epitomized the rise and fall of America’s steel industry—building a community center, renovating crumbling properties, talking about using art “to combat the dark side of capitalism.” Within a few years, he appeared in the Atlantic’s “25 Brave Thinkers” issue and was invited to speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival. In 2018, he was elected lieutenant governor of the state, on a ticket with Gov. Tom Wolf, in a landslide.

In 1993, Fetterman’s best friend was killed in a car accident while on the way to pick him up.
Searching for meaning after the earth-shattering loss, the 24-year-old Fetterman volunteered at the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, where he was paired with a young kid named Nicky Santana. The boy’s dad had died of AIDS. Not long afterward, his mother did, too.
That “one-two punch,” as he calls it, sent Fetterman into a spiral contemplating the cruelty of inequality.“It was all born out of that random lottery of birth,” Fetterman says. “What stopped me from being the guy driving to his house and dying in a car accident? What’s to say that it wasn’t me who would bury both of my parents from a horrific disease like AIDS before my ninth birthday?”

That led him to make a drastic career change: He ditched his job at a lucrative insurance firm and joined AmeriCorps in Pittsburgh. He went to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and studied public policy. Eventually, he found himself in Braddock, where he was hired to run a GED program.
The first time he drove around the town, he says, “it felt like ruins … you could just tell something really amazing happened here and then something really bad happened here.” What had happened was steel: Braddock was once a boomtown that nearly 21,000 people called home. When it went bust, it became one of the most impoverished and crime-ridden communities in the state. Today, 37 percent of Braddock’s 1,869 residents live in poverty, and the per capita income is about $15,000. A large majority of the population is Black.


"At a shoot at his home in Braddock, Pennsylvania—a converted car dealership full of salvaged treasures that looks like something out of Architectural Digest—he’s not trying to hide his grumpiness even a little bit. He says he’ll pose for photos only while standing. (He’s 6 foot 8.) His senior campaign aide, Bobby Maggio, thanks a photographer for “dealing with Cranky Pants.” Fetterman jokes—although it’s clear he’s only half-kidding—that people prefer to take pictures of his wife, Gisele, and their dog."

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/04/16/john-fetterman-profile-2022-senate-politics-pennsylvania-481259