Lieutenant governor candidate drops out of race

Says she can’t compete with opponents’ wealth

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Aryanna Berringer of Murrysville was the first Democrat to step up to challenge Lt. Gov. Mike Stack in the primary, back in May of last year.

Now she’s dropping out of the race, having learned that — as an unknown liberal working mother without personal wealth — winning is pretty much impossible.

“I saw I was not going to be able to compete against candidates who are being bankrolled by their mega-wealthy families,” Ms. Berringer, 35, said in an interview. “All this money, they’re going to dump that into TV ads and people like me are going to get drowned out.”

And instead of the usual smooth words about the wonderful people she met and all she’s learned — although she believes and says those things, too — Ms. Berringer is leaving with a few parting blasts at some of her competitors and what she sees as their hypocrisy.

First on the list is Braddock Mayor John Fetterman, the nationally renowned populist campaigner in sleeve tats and T-shirts who calls President Donald Trump (and others) “jagoff.” His post pays $150 a month and has no real official duties.

A federal financial disclosure form filed when he was running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2016 showed that Mr. Fetterman and his wife, Giselle, got a $54,000 gift from his parents, which the candidate was not required to disclose. He also claimed two trust accounts for the couple’s children, valued then at $115,000 to $250,000 each.

“Mayor Fetterman is literally bankrolled by his family,” Ms. Berringer said. “Of course he can run around the state, because he doesn’t have a job.”

In that Senate campaign, Mr. Fetterman also criticized U.S. Supreme Court decisions that allow unlimited donations to super PACs, as long as they don’t coordinate expenditures with the candidates they support. Such a PAC,