Politics

National spotlight

Fetterman, who makes his appearances on television with the painted brick walls of his Chevy-dealership-turned-home behind him, entered the national spotlight when the Keystone State became the setting for one of the biggest political stories of the hotly contested 2020 general election season.

The drama began on election night when President Donald Trump took what appeared to be a commanding early lead and declared that he had successfully captured the highly coveted 20 electoral votes up for grabs in the commonwealth.

But in the days that followed, as county election officials continued to count the more than 2 million mailed ballots that had arrived, the Republican incumbent saw his advantage evaporate as a deluge of Democratic votes propelled Joe Biden to a convincing victory.

Trump and his Republican allies launched an effort to reverse the swing. They filed a barrage of lawsuits insisting that the results were fraudulent and that the election had been stolen from the president.

That’s when Fetterman spoke out.

“I felt like I needed to remind people that one plus one equals two,” he said. “We never really had a situation, at least in my lifetime, where we had the leader of the free world trying to tell us that one plus one equals three. And that was deeply outrageous.

“That was the motivation for me to get out there.”

Fetterman said the accusations are insulting to those who worked so hard

during a global pandemic to ensure that the general election was fair and accurate.

“Pennsylvania pulled off a remarkable election,” he said. “I’m not talking about who won and who lost. I’m talking about no cases of voter fraud, no cases of voter intimidation, no cases of major disruptions. And anyone who would slander that needs to be checked, and that’s really what this is about.”

Fetterman was happy to fill that role. The result has been a whirlwind of media appearances which has catapulted him to national celebrity status, leading to a series of profiles about him in publications like GQ and Rolling Stone.

Being himself

Fetterman said he’s not one of those disingenuous politicians. That means the person you see on television is exactly the same person he is behind closed doors.

He will not back down from a challenge. He will tell people what he really thinks. He is not afraid to say the first thing that might pop into his mind. And those qualities can lead to some humorous moments.

Like the time he appeared on the “Today” show last month. When asked how the state would be responding to a lawsuit Trump filed seeking to stop mailed ballots from being counted, he said that it wouldn’t prevent ballots from being lawfully received and counted.

“The president can sue a ham sandwich,” he quipped.

It didn’t take long before the phrase “ham sandwich” was trending on Twitter.

“I was as surprised as anyone that kind of picked up,” he said. “It was just an expression that captured how ridiculous all this was. The fact that we had a free and fair election isn’t going to change no matter how

many lawyers you send or how many lawsuits you file.

“Free and fair elections underpin American democracy. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. But challenging the underlying veracity of them without a speck of evidence is damaging to American democracy.”

Then there was the time he called out one of his colleagues.

In response to Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick offering up $1 million for information that leads to voter fraud arrests and convictions, Fetterman tweeted a pair of links to media reports about two cases in Pennsylvania where attempts at voter fraud were discovered and prosecuted.

“Hey, Governor Patrickit’s your counterpart in Pennsylvania” Fetterman wrote in one tweet.

“I’d like to collect your handsome reward for reporting voter fraud.

“I got a dude in Forty Fort, PA who tried to have his dead mom vote for Trump.

“I’d like mine in Sheetz gift cards pls.”

Fetterman said he would donate Patrick’s money to a local food bank. But, so far, he has not received a penny.

“Don’t call for a national reward for voter fraud and then when you’re presented with evidence pretend that you didn’t do it,” he said. “I’ve been promoting the fact that we had two cases of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Two, two, two.

“It demonstrates how rare voter fraud is and how hard it is to pull off because these two people were caught virtually instantly for trying to perpetrate it,” he said.

Behind the scenes

Fetterman has a dedication to authenticity, one that doesn’t waver even when it comes to public in

teractions with his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman.

Take, for example, her penchant for posting group pictures where everyone is in the frame but his towering head is cut off.

Or his needling of her undying love for Funyuns.

“This idea that life is different for us than it is for anyone else is not true,” he said. “I mean, my wife is my biggest troll so if I have an opportunity to have fun with her I do. See, she has this Funyun issue and I found this pillowcase-sized bag of them at Costco and she was just demolishing the bag and I took a picture of it and put it online because I thought it was funny.

“You know, it’s like no one wants to talk openly about their issues with Funyons,” he added. “It’s just who we are. She writes every tweet from her account and I write every tweet from my account. It’s just us.”

But the attention the couple attract is not always positive.

Gisele was recently the target of racial discrimination during a quick trip to the grocery store. She was standing in line to pay when a woman unleashed a racist tirade directed at her that continued into the parking lot, where she was able to capture some of it on video and shared it on Twitter. (Warning: offensive language is in the linked video.)

The state police said there was enough evidence to file criminal charges against the woman but Gisele, who says her family fled violent conditions in Brazil when she was young and has since become an American citizen, said she did not want the woman to face prosecution.

“The decision not to file criminal charges came from a place of compassion,” Fetterman said about the incident. “I hope that I

could meet her again some day and hear that she has changed all that because I believe in a second chance. We are not the sum total of the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

His accomplishments

The hope for redemption, Fetterman said, extends beyond that single incident. It has become the driving force behind one of his proudest accomplishments during his time as lieutenant governor.

“We are completely reinventing the pardons process,” he said. “Pennsylvania literally spends billions of dollars on punishing and incarcerating people but spends under a million dollars on forgiving them. We focus too much on the punishment and not enough on

the redemption.”

In addition to his efforts to reinvent the pardons process, Fetterman has championed a slew of issues including equal treatment for the LGBTQIA community, the legalization of marijuana and a higher minimum wage.

Fetterman said he will continue to push for positive change no matter where his career takes him. He said his future is still unclear, and that he is giving thought to a run for governor or perhaps for the U.S. Senate, which he ran for unsuccessfully in the 2016 primary.

“I’m not sure what my plans are for 2022,” he said. “Wherever I feel like I have the most opportunity to contribute in a positive and meaningful way is where I’ll go.”