Promising to take Braddock values to Washington, D.C., John Fetterman, Braddock mayor, launched his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.
“Wow... I already feel like I won,” Mr. Fetterman said Monday as he surveyed a crowd of supporters gathered for the announcement on the roof of his home, a former auto dealership across the street from U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works. With the hulking mill and the green south bank of the Monongahela as a backdrop, the candidate said his campaign would be focused on inequality, which he called one of the defining issues of our time. In the Senate, he said, he would work to combat the negative consequences of “the random lottery of birth.”
“You can sum up why we have to take on this fight right now in just one word: inequality,” he told the crowd. “It’s inequality in income; inequality in wealth; inequality in housing; inequality in opportunity; inequality in health care, even inequality in the air we breathe.”
Mr. Fetterman joins a field that already includes retired Admiral Joe Sestak and Katie McGinty, the former chief of staff for Gov. Tom Wolf. They are vying for the chance to unseat Sen. Pat Toomey, the Republican incumbent who had formally announced his re-election bid the previous day. Joseph Vodvarka, a former Democratic candidate for Senate and governor, said he too plans to join the Democratic field.
Mr. Fetterman spoke to a festive crowd, ushered up to the roof to the sound of reggae music. Many wore the campaign’s black and white T-shirts, emblazoned with the slogan, “Build It Back Up.”
In the parking lot below was a taco truck.
“I do not look like a typical politician,” said the mayor, with the physique of a nose tackle. “I don’t even look like a normal person.”
Mr. Fetterman, 46, opened his bid for Washington office with a recitation of the events that brought him to Braddock and public office.
A stint in AmeriCorps brought him to a teaching and training assignment in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1995. After graduate study at Harvard University, he came back to Western Pennsylvania to establish a GED program in Braddock. He recalled running for mayor and winning by a single vote in his first term.
Mr. Fetterman has attracted national attention for his efforts to counter the blight of the aging mill town. Once a thriving industrial and commercial center, its population has dwindled to less than 3,000. Mr. Fetterman’s efforts to counter that decline have been chronicled in publications including The Atlantic, Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine.
“I truly can’t lose in this race,” he told the neighbors and supporters who gathered to witness the launch. “I already have the best job I’ll ever have.”
In an interview, Mr. Fetterman said he couldn’t offer a campaign budget projection. But he said was in the race not just to bring attention to the issue of inequality, but to win. In his speech, he didn’t offer any policy prescriptions to combat inequality but those presumably will emerge in the course of his campaign.
It would be a big leap to go from Braddock to the Senate, but in a campaign year in which outsiders have frustrated establishment presidential candidates in both parties, Mr. Fetterman’s singular public profile could prove an advantage.
Mr. Fetterman has a nationally prominent campaign strategist in Bill Hyers, who managed New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2013 campaign and directed President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign in Pennsylvania, and quarterbacked Michael Nutter’s come-from-behind victory in the 2007 Philadelphia mayor’s race.
Politics editor James P. O’Toole: jotoole@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1562. Joe Smydo: jsmydo@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.
First Published: September 14, 2015, 4:52 p.m.
Updated: September 15, 2015, 3:31 a.m.
