Fetterman promised to keep getting back up – and won Democrats a critical victory
DURING an embarrassing stumble over his words on stage just a fortnight ago, John Fetterman reminded voters of the elephant in the room.
“It knocked me down,” the Democratic candidate for the Senate said of his recent stroke. “But I’m going to keep coming back up.”
Few might have believed him then, with the odds stacked against him. But Mr Fetterman did just that with a stunning victory in Pennsylvania, flipping a critical seat that might just keep control of the Senate in his party’s hands.
In one of the night’s biggest upsets, the 6ft8in plain-speaking, basketball shorts-wearing lieutenant governor accepted victory after portraying himself as “fighting for everyone in Pennsylvania that ever got knocked down”.
His defeat of Republican Mehmet Oz, the Donald Trump-backed TV doctor, epitomised a night in which the Democrats confounded expectations of a “red wave” seizing Congress.
Speaking in Pittsburgh at his election night party, Mr Fetterman, 53, said: “We held the line. I never expected that we would turn these red counties blue but we did what we needed to do. And that’s why I’ll be the next US Senator from Pennsylvania. Thank you so much.”
He credited his “every county, every vote” campaign strategy, in which the tattooed and hoodie-wearing candidate sought to bring the Democratic Party back to predominantly white workingclass areas that have increasingly rejected it, even as he ran on a progressive platform.
The straight-talking local boy has an Everyman appeal, making headlines last winter for turning up to meet President Biden at the site of a collapsed Pittsburgh bridge in long shorts.
His Left-wing platform aligns him more with socialist elements of his party, such as Bernie Sanders, than fellow Pennsylvanian Mr Biden.
Mr Fetterman has said he hopes to legalise recreational marijuana, offer clemency for certain prisoners serving life sentences, and return to the Roe v Wade ruling on abortion.
Dr Oz’s team tried hard to label their opponent a “radical” and “too extreme”, but the jibes failed to stick.
Mr Fetterman, who was boosted by a late endorsement from Oprah Winfrey, countered by painting Dr Oz, a multimillionaire New Jersey resident, as an out-of-touch “carpetbagger” and opportunist.