Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the former Braddock mayor whose rise in politics has been fueled by grassroots donors and a pledge for transformative change, cruised to victory in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, becoming his party’s standard-bearer for one of the country’s most important seats.
The Associated Press called the victory for Mr. Fetterman shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday.
As of 7 a.m. Wednesday, Mr. Fetterman had more than doubled Mr. Lamb’s vote, leading 59% to 27%. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta was a distant third at 10%, and Jenkintown Borough Councilwoman Alex Khalil was fourth at just above 4%.
Missing from the winner’s election night party Tuesday was all 6-foot-8 of Mr. Fetterman, who continues to recover from a stroke he had late last week. Earlier in the afternoon, he underwent a procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator at a hospital in Lancaster, his campaign said. The procedure was “successful,” the campaign added.
Second lady Gisele Fetterman said Tuesday that her husband will be back on the campaign trail soon but that there’s no exact date for him to do so. Doctors at the hospital, where Mr. Fetterman is resting, told him he was on his way to a “full recovery” from the stroke, according to the campaign.
“You may have noticed I am not John Fetterman, the next senator of our great state,” Ms. Fetterman said to cheers from supporters at the Hyatt on the campus of Pittsburgh International Airport. She said her husband will “be back on his feet in no time.”
Nonetheless, voters in the closed primary — registered Democrats only — decided to put the party’s fate in the hands of a man who preaches a political philosophy where it’s unacceptable to settle for “runaway margins” in Pennsylvania’s red counties. He said to win statewide, it takes bringing out the “soul of the party” — Democrats in places like Westmoreland and Fayette counties.
Mr. Fetterman emerged from a primary that was — by and large — defined by the idea of electability and by its inherently high stakes. The front-runners were pretty similar ideologically, but pitched different general election strategies they said would be the best way to win such a crucial seat. Pennsylvania’s is the only open Senate seat up for election this year that’s held by a Republican, but in a state Joe Biden won in 2020.
“This is the most important race in the country. Control of the Senate is going to come down to Pennsylvania, and we have to flip this seat,” Mr. Fetterman said in a written statement after his victory Tuesday night. “We have a hard fight ahead of us — but Pennsylvania is worth fighting for. We’re going to win in November the same way we won tonight — by fighting for every county, and every vote.”
Mr. Lamb, who has won high stakes elections before, leaned into his campaign experience repeatedly, and said it’ll take someone like him — having beaten Donald Trump-backed Republicans in swing districts before — to win in November.
In a statement conceding the race late Tuesday night, Mr. Lamb said Democrats need to be “unequivocally united in our defense of this democracy, and we will be.”
“John’s vote in the Senate is essential to protect this democracy, and he will have my vote in November,” Mr. Lamb said. “I will do everything I can to help Democrats win.”
Ultimately, Mr. Lamb’s campaign will not get to test the theory that he’s the best candidate to coalesce swing voters — Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans alike — under one big party tent.
Instead, Democrats will have a nominee in Mr. Fetterman who favors legalizing recreational marijuana, suspending the federal gas tax to combat inflation, making the “hyper-rich” pay their fair share, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, and passing “commonsense” gun reforms.
For now, though, the party will have to wait for Mr. Fetterman to return to the trail. He suffered a stroke late last week, caused by a “clot from the heart being in an [atrial fibrillation] rhythm for too long,” his campaign said.
“I’m feeling better every day, and I’m going to be back on the campaign trail to thank you all in person soon,” Mr. Fetterman’s post-victory statement read.
It’s another chapter in Mr. Fetterman’s unique story, which started in a suburb of York County and made its way through Braddock, a borough of barely 2,000 residents. He was the mayor there for 13 years, winning his first election by a single vote.
Mr. Fetterman leveraged the national exposure he received for his work in Braddock toward a run for the U.S. Senate in 2016, but finished third in a four-way Democratic primary with 20% of the vote. Katie McGinty, the nominee, would go on to lose the general election, a prospect that Democrats don’t want to repeat this year.
What sunk Mr. Fetterman’s 2016 run — a lack of name recognition, notably — may have impacted his opponents this time around.
Mr. Lamb, a former Marine and federal prosecutor, launched his campaign last August with the backing of dozens of labor unions and local Democratic leaders. He said winning the election would take “going everywhere,” and that’s what he tried to do during his primary bid.
His rhetoric matched what many Democrats urged: that to win a statewide election in Pennsylvania, it’ll take resonating with center-right voters who may have supported Donald Trump in one or both of the last presidential elections but could be swayed by a moderate.
Mr. Lamb’s supporters gathered Tuesday night at a crowded Coach’s Bottleshop and Grille on Banksville Road to follow the results. At around 9:45 p.m., his campaign said the congressman would not be speaking at the event.
Jack and Jean Niederberger, of Dormont, who worked for the campaign, said they were disappointed their candidate didn’t win. Mr. Niederberger is a longtime Democratic activist, but Mrs. Niederberger said she changed her registration to be able to vote for Mr. Lamb in the primary.
Mr. Niederberger said Mr. Fetterman’s statewide name recognition was too difficult to overcome. The couple did some campaigning in Edinboro, where her parents live, and many people weren’t familiar with Mr. Lamb.
“If we had one more month and another million dollars, maybe it would have been different,” Mrs. Niederberger said.
But Democrats opted for Mr. Fetterman, whose supporters told the Post-Gazette in recent weeks that they found him to be authentic. He tells it like it is and speaks from the heart, many said at events across Western Pennsylvania. Many of Mr. Lamb’s ardent backers said they would have no problem supporting Mr. Fetterman in the general if he wins.
That’s despite the efforts of Mr. Fetterman’s opponents, who warned as the election neared that Republicans would bury Mr. Fetterman in attack ads over a 2013 incident when he was mayor of Braddock. It could cost Democrats the seat, Mr. Lamb warned.
Mr. Lamb and Mr. Kenyatta criticized Mr. Fetterman for pursuing and pulling a shotgun on a man — whom he believed to be involved in a shooting, he said, but who turned out to be an unarmed Black jogger. They asked him to apologize on debate stages, but Mr. Fetterman stuck by his account of the incident: that he heard shots, made a split-second decision to intervene for the safety of his community and kept the man there until police arrived, but didn’t aim the shotgun at him.
The man, Christopher Miyares, said Mr. Fetterman aimed the shotgun at his chest.
Mr. Fetterman said, in defense of his intentions, that Braddock had a significant problem with gun violence — a problem that he worked to overcome as mayor, going over 5½ years with no killings.
Staff writer Ed Blazina contributed reporting. Julian Routh: jrouth@post-gazette.com; Twitter: @julianrouth
First Published: May 18, 2022, 1:01 a.m.
Updated: May 18, 2022, 4:31 a.m.
