Pennsylvania campaign wildcard Fetterman turns to governing

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — When John Fetterman goes to Washington in January as one particular of the Senate’s new members, he’ll bring along an irreverent type from Pennsylvania that extends from his personal personalized costume code — tremendous everyday — to hanging marijuana flags exterior his existing office in the point out Capitol.

Pennsylvania’s distinctive lieutenant governor, who just flipped the state’s open Senate seat to Democrats, may perhaps be the only senator at any time to be declared an “American style god” — as GQ journal when did.

The 6-foot-8 Fetterman will tower in excess of the at present tallest senator, Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas by 3 inches. And he may be the most tattooed senator (if not the only tattooed senator).

He may perhaps split some things: He can be aggressively progressive, campaigning challenging on a pledge to rid the Senate of the filibuster rule. He also may possibly turn into the Senate’s most important media attraction: He’s plainspoken and, primarily on social media, has a wicked wit.

He has a supporter in Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom Fetterman endorsed for president in 2016 when Sanders was the insurgent Democrat demanding the establishment preferred in the major, Hillary Clinton.

Sanders identified as Fetterman’s race the nation’s marquee contest — a victory for a progressive applicant who concentrated on economic challenges, center-class battle and the increasing enrichment of the prosperous.

“And I consider if there’s any prospect who was managing extra than any one else, who determined with the doing the job class, who made apparent it that he was going to Washington to signify doing work people, it was John Fetterman,” Sanders instructed The Linked Push.

Fetterman has performed down his personal progressivism. In its place, he said the Democratic Get together has appear close to to his very long-held positions — such as legalizing cannabis — and has held himself out as a Democrat who votes like a Democrat.

On the marketing campaign trail, Fetterman reported he would like to emulate his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, 3rd-phrase Sen. Bob Casey, an establishment in the state’s politics who campaigned for Fetterman and is lending his main of team to assistance oversee Fetterman’s transition.

Tale continues

Casey doesn’t assume Fetterman’s progressive politics will sideline him, stating Democrats currently have a wide coalition that can get points finished, these as President Joe Biden’s infrastructure laws and huge wellbeing care and climate adjust invoice.

“I consider you see a form of a wide coalition that’s going to keep together to, you know, to go the region ahead. So I imagine John will suit very well into that,” Casey reported. “And there’ll be periods when he’s acquired an challenge that he needs to go after that not all people will want, but we can get the job done by way of these.”

Fetterman, 53, is fresh off profitable the midterm election’s most high-priced — and, almost certainly, most strange — race for Senate.

In the middle of the marketing campaign, Fetterman survived, then recovered from a stroke that he states just about killed him. He went on to conquer Dr. Mehmet Oz, the coronary heart surgeon-turned-Television set celeb who spent $27 million of his possess dollars right after shifting from New Jersey to operate.

Fetterman nonetheless suffers from auditory processing condition — a stroke’s common aftereffect — that could call for him to use shut-captioning in hearings, conferences and debates. It also could perhaps restrict his capability to interact in the popular observe of offering interviews to reporters in Senate corridors.

Fetterman’s manner sensibility — he sports activities hoodies and shorts, even in winter — arrived up on the marketing campaign path, when Republicans plastered him as somebody who attire like a teen residing in his parents’ basement. At one particular marketing campaign event for Oz, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., jokingly advised the group that Oz at least “wears trousers.”

In the Senate, Fetterman will be signing up for the clubbiest of clubs, 100 of the nation’s final insiders: millionaires, scions and king — or queen — makers. His supporters quite a lot see him having to the Senate otherwise: as an outsider.

Fetterman grew to become some thing of a progressive hero with no the party’s aid, attracting a subsequent as the mayor of a Pittsburgh satellite neighborhood. In that position, he done very same-sex marriages in advance of they were being lawful and got arrested in a demonstration just after Pittsburgh’s regional overall health treatment large closed a clinic in Braddock, his poverty-wracked city.

“He’s for us — not for the large motion picture stars or the huge people who have all the revenue. He’s for the minor Pennsylvania guys,” stated 1 supporter, Lydia Thomas.

In a attainable preview to his Senate tenure, Fetterman’s campaign struck a harmony concerning insiderism and outsiderism.

He has forged bonds with Casey and Gov. Tom Wolf and obtained significant-profile campaign trail enable from Biden and former President Barack Obama. But as lieutenant governor, he cast a reputation as someone who didn’t schmooze with state lawmakers and, as a prospect, who failed to kiss get together insiders’ rings.

When it came time for the condition Democratic Party to endorse in the 4-way Senate key, Fetterman dismissed it as transactional his campaign slagged it off as an “inside of sport.”

On the marketing campaign path, Fetterman frequently employed Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia as a foil, suggesting Manchin does not vote like a Democrat ought to and won’t get rid of the filibuster.

At one packed county Democratic get together breakfast, he questioned voters if there ended up any “Joe Manchin Democrats” in the room. No person spoke up. Then Fetterman instructed them that a Democrat who doesn’t guidance reducing the filibuster “must believe that that there are 10 or 12 Republican senators of conscience.” Manchin’s business office would not remark.

It’s not apparent that Fetterman sights himself as an outsider, or that he meant to run that way. He has dismissed issues about his design and style or how he would suit into the Senate, expressing it should be the minimum of anyone’s problems specified the stakes.

“Here’s what I promise to never to do: I guarantee to never ever incite a riot on Capitol Hill. I promise to never stand up on the ground of the Senate soon after I have been driven from it by a bunch of rioters and lie about our election in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman reported in an interview previous yr.

In the course of the 2020 presidential marketing campaign, Fetterman was in substantial demand from Television networks and carried Biden’s defend. As a senator, he might once again be in high need on the Sunday chat reveals. And his social media feeds will bear seeing: His campaign trolled Oz relentlessly, and he at times spits out cuss text when describing items he doesn’t like.

Then there’s his wardrobe. Fetterman has claimed that he will use a fit in the Senate chamber and, confident adequate, when he showed up for orientation before this month, he wore one. He isn’t totally a stranger to dressing up he has worn a accommodate while presiding as lieutenant governor in the condition Senate.

Senate aides usually are not positive if the Senate costume code is published down anyplace. And even though adult men are expected to wear jackets and ties, Casey indicates that the dress code is just not generally enforced.

“Lately I have viewed selected Republican associates whose names I will not expose — but if you enjoy intently on the video, you can see — have confirmed up without ties, or at times with no a jacket,” Casey reported.

Fetterman has not always proven reverence for position anticipations or requirements he may possibly not like. For instance, as mayor of Braddock, he skipped approximately just one-third of the borough council conferences all through his 13 many years in place of work, data show.

He skipped dozens of voting classes in the state Senate all through his 4 years as lieutenant governor, including 8 of nine days this drop even though he was on the marketing campaign path. When he did exhibit up to preside, Republican senators complained that he showed a lack of interest in learning the regulations of purchase.

2 times, Republican senators went by way of amazing procedural maneuvers to eliminate him as the presiding officer in the center of a voting session, contending he had willfully defied guidelines of buy to aid fellow Democrats in partisan showdowns.

Not only that, but he ruffled feathers by hanging flags — this kind of as the pro-cannabis legalization and LGBTQ and transgender-legal rights flags — from the door of the lieutenant governor’s office environment and its next-floor outdoor balcony that overlooks the condition Capitol’s sweeping front techniques.

Republicans, complaining he was turning his Capitol place of work into a dorm area, slipped a provision into lame-duck finances legislation to cease it — prompting Fetterman to lampoon them as marshaling the “gay delight law enforcement.”

The U.S. Senate will have its have partisanship and its very own transactional dealings in between members. Casey claims Fetterman is prepared for it, getting been a mayor and lieutenant governor. What may possibly be the largest alter for Fetterman, Casey reported, is the demand from customers on his time that will preserve him in Washington and away from his wife and a few faculty-age kids.

“Your lifetime turns into — for the reason that of the agenda of votes and hearings — the time in Washington and that is diverse,” Casey said. “Most people today you should not have that type of schedule where … from time to time you are in Washington much more than the condition that you signify.”

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Linked Press countrywide political writer Steve Peoples and online video journalist Jessie Wardarski contributed to this report. Comply with Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriter