HARRISBURG, Pa. – Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, the lawmaker known for his unconventional and irreverent brand of politics, is in the news again after a blowup at a closed-door meeting with union allies and former staff aides who aired concerns about his mental health.
Fetterman’s life and political career have been upended the past three years with medical scares, including a stroke he suffered on 2022’s campaign trail and a six-week hospital stay to be treated for clinical depression in 2023.
As Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, the plainspoken Fetterman became a popular campaign surrogate for Democrats in the battleground state and a force in raising small-dollar campaign donations.
Fetterman’s victory in 2022 ‘s Senate race was cause for celebration for Democrats, flipping a seat that was key to the party holding the Senate majority.
He ran as a hero to progressives, with a platform ranging from the legalization of marijuana to strengthening union and LGBT rights. But as a senator, he has made a rightward shift on some issues, prompting some former supporters to disavow him.
Getting his start in a tiny former steel town
Long before that, the Harvard-educated Fetterman, now 55, had made himself into a minor celebrity as the mayor of downtrodden former steel town Braddock, where he settled originally as an AmeriCorps alumni to set up a GED program.
There’s his unusual looks: he’s 6-foot-8 and tattooed with a shaved head, goatee and glower like a professional wrestler.
“I don’t even look like a typical person,” Fetterman once joked.
There’s his home: a converted car dealership across the street from U.S. Steel’s blast furnace.
There’s his casual dress: as mayor he often wore short-sleeve work shirts and cargo shorts. (As senator, his style evolved to gym shorts and hoodies, causing a stir in the chamber.)
There was his bare-knuckled politics: In 2010, he was arrested in a protest over the closing of a hospital in Braddock. Later, he performed same-sex marriage ceremonies before it was legal.
His attention-getting efforts for reviving Braddock helped land profiles in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The New York Times and other news outlets. He appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.”
He gave Ted Talks. He has three school-age children and has spoken at length about his wife, Gisele, whose legal status later lapsed after arriving in the U.S. from Brazil as a child.
Not always playing nice with other politicians
Fetterman has long been a wild card in the political realm, forging a career largely on his own, independently from the Democratic Party.
He endorsed the insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016’s presidential primary and ran from the left against the party-backed Democrat in Pennsylvania’s 2016 Senate primary. He lost.
As lieutenant governor, Fetterman didn’t always shown reverence for job expectations or requirements, skipping Senate voting sessions where he was supposed to preside or getting removed by Republican senators as the presiding officer in partisan disputes over floor rules.
He curses casually on his social media feeds and, in the 2022 Senate campaign, relentlessly trolled his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, in ground-breaking ways.
But his time in the Senate has been tumultuous.
Hospitalized after joining the Senate
Fetterman checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center barely a month after he was sworn in to the Senate, amid staff concerns over his isolating and disengaged behavior.
At the time, he was still suffering from effects of the stroke that he said nearly killed him.
Fetterman returned to the Senate a much more outgoing lawmaker, frequently joking with his fellow senators and engaging with reporters in the hallways.
He has talked openly about his struggle with depression and urged people to get help.
Still a something of a loner
Two years later, Fetterman is still something of a loner in the Senate.
He has fallen out with progressives over his staunch support of Israel in its war in Gaza and drawn anger from rank-and-file Democrats for arguing that his party needs to work with, not against, Trump.
It nevertheless has brought some Fetterman plaudits.
Bill Maher, host of the political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” urged Fetterman to run for president in 2028 while conservatives — who had long made Fetterman a target for his progressive politics — have sprung to Fetterman’s defense.
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.
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