Fifty years after a mental health diagnosis sank the national political hopes of one of the country’s most prominent politicians, U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s announcement that he has hospitalized himself for clinical depression unleashed a starkly different reaction.
The news Thursday that the freshman Pennsylvania Democrat checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center on Wednesday — a week after being hospitalized for feeling lightheaded and nine months after a nearly fatal stroke — prompted a torrent of supportive messages from other elected officials. Some spoke publicly about their own struggles with mental health.
“Like millions of Pennsylvanians, I’ve struggled with major depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation my entire life,” state Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh, wrote Thursday on Twitter.
U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, a fellow Lehigh County Democrat, referred to her own partner’s 2019 suicide in a statement supporting Mr. Fetterman.
Across state lines in New York, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted his admiration for Mr. Fetterman’s decision to seek treatment, and added: “Back in 2010, I was hospitalized for depression. I would not be alive, let alone in Congress, were it not for mental health care.”
The outpouring of support from Democrats — and mostly silence from Mr. Fetterman’s political opponents — contrasts sharply with the attacks aimed at the late U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who dropped off the 1972 Democratic presidential ticket as George McGovern’s running mate after his own depression diagnosis became public.
Unlike Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Eagleton had tried to keep his hospitalizations a secret, hoping to avoid the stigma that mental health advocates say can still haunt those battling depression, trauma and other psychological problems.
“A lot of us look at that story as something from the dark ages,” said Kristin Kanthak, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh whose research has focused on the ways groups of people are represented in government.
She pointed to Jason Kander, an Afghanistan war veteran and once-rising political star who dropped out of the Kansas City mayor’s race in 2018 to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Seeing people who project a traditional image of strength — a military record for Mr. Kander, a towering stature, tattooed arms and workaday wardrobe for Mr. Fetterman — is helping shift attitudes about mental health in the public arena, she said.
“There’s something to be said for this big, strong man, who is an exemplar of masculinity, saying he needs help,” Ms. Kanthak said.
Coming just a week after his most recent hospitalization, Mr. Fetterman’s decision to check into Walter Reed once again thrust into the spotlight what has been a central question since his stroke just before last year’s May primary: whether he’s up to the job.
“It’s totally legitimate to wonder what our representation in the Senate is, when, as humans, we want to put our energy into hoping he and his family are OK,” Ms. Kanthak said.
As was the case during the hard-fought 2022 election — in which Mr. Fetterman defeated Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz by about five percentage points — it’s a question rooted in both the deeply personal experiences of millions of Pennsylvanians who’ve had their own health crises and the ruthless political calculations of a hyper-partisan age.
“A clear majority of Pennsylvanians sent him there,” said Chris Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. “Now the question is will his health condition affect his ability to successfully engage in the job Pennsylvanians gave him.
“Everybody has to take a breath and see how this moves forward,” Mr. Borick added.
In last year’s campaign, one of the marquis races in the midterm elections and the only one in which Democrats flipped a Republican-held Senate seat, attacks on Mr. Fetterman’s health seemed to backfire. That was often because ordinary people saw in his public struggles the same private health challenges they and their families have had to overcome, said Berwood Yost, a pollster and political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.
When those challenges arise, “they don’t lose their jobs,” Mr. Yost said. “They simply have the opportunity to get better.
“It was pretty clear during the election that people were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Yost said.
And it’s why Senate Republicans aren’t likely to start calling for Mr. Fetterman’s resignation any time soon, even though his seat would offer them a chance to bring the chamber back to a 50-50 split.
“I don’t think you should expect to see Republicans taking advantage of Fetterman being in the hospital for the same reason we wouldn’t do it in our workplace: It’s tacky,” Ms. Kanthak said.
After Mr. Fetterman’s announcement, politicians who’ve had their own mental health struggles quickly moved to explain how the pressures of public life amplify the challenges faced by millions across the country.
“The grueling campaign, recent stroke and history of depression are an extraordinarily difficult combination,” Mr. Schlossberg wrote Thursday.
For Mr. Fetterman, the after-effects of the stroke could take a particularly devastating psychological toll, experts said. For most of his life, he’s been a Harvard graduate who’s the biggest guy in any room he walked into. Suddenly, he found himself reliant on aides to hold an iPad in front of him to show a real-time transcription of what people are saying to him, just so he can hold a conversation.
On top of that, he’s facing the additional strains of moving to a new city, being separated from his family in Braddock and starting a new, high-stakes job — and doing so as a newly elevated political celebrity, with all the attention that status brings], Mr. Borick said.
“He’s done it in the most public way possible,” Mr. Borick said. “That’s a lot. Even your biggest political opponents will recognize, that’s a lot.”
Mr. Fetterman’s hospitalization comes just days after the state’s other senator, Bob Casey Jr., underwent successful surgery for prostate cancer, according to his office. Like Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Casey has not said when he’ll return to work, though doctors told him he won’t need further treatment, his office said.
“I don’t know of another time when a state has had two senators going through medical crises at the same time,” Ms. Kanthak said.
Meanwhile, she said, “the world keeps turning, and the Senate keeps voting.”
In the short term, Mr. Fetterman won’t miss much. The Senate is scheduled to be in recess next week. When it returns, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., can shuffle the floor schedule to make sure bills that wouldn’t pass without Mr. Fetterman’s vote don’t advance until he’s back.
Though the Senate remains closely divided — Democrats hold a slim 51 to 49 majority — Mr. Fetterman’s absence or even resignation wouldn’t cause the kind of chaos that paralyzed the Pennsylvania House of Representatives early this year.
There, the resignations of three Democrats temporarily upended the party’s one-seat majority until the party swept three Allegheny County special elections Feb. 7.
In Mr. Fetterman’s case, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, could unilaterally appoint a temporary successor who would serve until the next regularly scheduled election, in November. Mr. Shapiro’s appointment would allow Democrats to maintain their majority.
“It’s not the General Assembly. This is a situation where Gov. Shapiro can name someone very quickly,” Ms. Kanthak said. “There would be no point at which Pennsylvania doesn’t have a vote in the U.S. Senate.”
Were that to happen, however, Pennsylvania would suddenly find itself in the white-hot glare of the national political spotlight. A swing state that’s already a top target for both parties, the battle for an open Senate seat would play out in an off-year election during which there are no other major federal races.
There’d be nowhere else for donors to throw their money. Nowhere else for the parties’ political operations to mobilize. Nowhere else to run campaign ads.
Nowhere but here.
“It would be absolute insanity,” Mr. Yost said. “There would be nothing else for national attention to focus on.”
The state’s political class is already gearing up for a crucial 2024 campaign, when Mr. Casey will be running for reelection during a presidential election year — and Pennsylvania will again be a top electoral prize.
If Mr. Fetterman’s health problems led him to step down after Aug. 9 — 90 days before the November general election — Mr. Shapiro’s appointed replacement would serve through the 2024 election. That means the state would have two Senate seats on the same ballot as the parties’ presidential tickets.
“Mind-numbing,” Mr. Yost said. “The idea that you would have two Senate races in the same year as a presidential race? I don’t even want to think about it.”
But, he added, that’s unlikely to happen. Mr. Fetterman first sought this Senate seat seven years ago. He built a statewide political base and national political following in the years since.
“He has aspired to this seat,” Mr. Yost said. “I believe he still believes he has something to give to the Senate. I would not expect him to rush to make a decision.”
Mike Wereschagin: mwereschagin@post-gazette.com; Twitter @wrschgn
First Published: February 17, 2023, 7:18 p.m.
Updated: February 18, 2023, 12:20 p.m.
