Can ‘Big John’ Fetterman help Democrats win back the working class?

It’s hard to neatly categorize John Fetterman’s politics. Which may be why so many people focus on the shorts. 

To be fair, the Democratic front-runner for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat stands out. The 6-foot-8 lieutenant governor has a head as bald as a bowling ball and a goatee that typically frames a scowl. He forgoes the usual politician’s uniform of khakis and a button-down for a black Carhartt sweatshirt and basketball shorts – even in the winter, and even when meeting with officials in Washington.  

His policy stances could be described as Brooklyn by way of Bethlehem Steel. The former mayor of a small, heavily Black town near Pittsburgh, Mr. Fetterman supports abortion rights, has long advocated for legalized marijuana and a higher minimum wage, and officiated a gay marriage in 2013 before it was legal. He’s also a gun owner who objects to a fracking ban – a major issue in the Keystone State – and says he doesn’t fully support the Green New Deal. When speaking to a few dozen fellow-goateed union members in the fluorescent-lit hall of United Steelworkers of America Local 2599 in Bethlehem, Mr. Fetterman emphasizes that “we need to keep making [stuff] in this country.”

The race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania offers one of the few potential pickup opportunities for Democrats in a cycle that is otherwise shaping up as a difficult one for the party. A crowded slate of Republican candidates – including the Trump-endorsed celebrity doctor, Mehmet Oz – have been waging an expensive and increasingly nasty primary battle here. On the Democratic side, by contrast, Mr. Fetterman has effortlessly cruised to a nearly 40-point lead over his nearest rival, Rep. Conor Lamb, ahead of the upcoming May 17 election.

One reason seems to be his perceived “electability.” A rare combination of mostly left-leaning policy stances with a style that’s more WWE than Ivy League (never mind the fact that he holds a graduate degree from Harvard), Mr. Fetterman presents the tantalizing possibility of a Democratic candidate who can win over not only the urban and suburban dwellers who make up the party’s base, but also the white working-class voters who constitute a significant share of Pennsylvania’s electorate – and who’ve been fleeing the Democratic Party in droves.

It may be a difficult balancing act. At the first statewide debate last month, his opponents attacked him over a nine-year-old incident in which he used a shotgun to detain a Black man who turned out to be an unarmed jogger – an episode critics say could hurt him among Black voters. Others wonder if his bearing may prove too abrasive for well-heeled Bucks County residents.

At the same time, some strategists believe that the working-class voters who’ve left the Democratic Party simply aren’t coming back – and that the exodus will continue to grow. An NBC News analysis last year found that the percentage of working-class voters nationwide who identify as Republicans has grown by 12 points over the past decade, while the share who call themselves Democrats has decreased by 8 points. President Joe Biden, for all his talk of Scranton roots, didn’t perform all that much better in 2020 than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 in most of Pennsylvania’s rural counties.

Still, Mr. Fetterman’s fans think if anyone can reverse that trend, it’s him. As lieutenant governor, he embarked on a 67-county listening tour, and has made a point of campaigning in all parts of the state – an effort that will test whether the Democratic Party’s increasingly progressive brand can broaden its appeal, if it comes in radically different packaging.

“John comes off as the working guy, the steel working guy. I mean, look, he wears boots to a formal dinner,” says Jerry Green, who has been president of Local 2599 for more than two decades.  

“I was about ready to give him a blow torch down at the plant today,” he adds with a chuckle, referencing the tour he gave Mr. Fetterman at the nearby Lehigh Heavy Forge. “He fit right in with us.”

A symbol of U.S. manufacturing’s decline

Directly across the Lehigh River from the union hall is the old Bethlehem Steel plant. Founded as the 20th century dawned, Bethlehem Steel was one of the largest steel producing companies in the world, aiding in the construction of major landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Empire State Building in New York. 

Its bankruptcy and subsequent dissolution in 2003 is often held up as a symbol of U.S. manufacturing writ large. Today one part of the rusting plant, which still casts a shadow over the river, is a concert venue and tourist destination, with informational placards about the industry. The rest is slowly being reclaimed by nature, tree branches weaving their way through shattered windows.

Larry Neff, sitting attentively at the front of the union hall as he waits for Mr. Fetterman to arrive, worked at Bethlehem Steel for almost three decades. When his father started out there in 1943, there were 46,000 employees. Decades later, when Mr. Neff, his two brothers, and his brother-in-law started working at the plant, there were fewer than half that. Now, Mr. Neff runs a Facebook group called “Bethlehem Steelworkers and their Families and Friends.” Most of the posts are obituaries. 

As the areas’s fortunes shifted, so did its politics. 

“There are a lot of Democrats around here who voted for Donald Trump,” says Mr. Neff, adding that he was not one of them.

In 2016, Mr. Trump shocked Democrats by flipping several states in the party’s longtime “blue wall” – including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, all states a Republican presidential candidate hadn’t carried since the late 1980s. While there were many factors at play in Mr. Trump’s Pennsylvania victory, one of the biggest surprises came in the former industrial hub of the Lehigh Valley and surrounding northeast, a onetime Democratic stronghold. Although Mr. Trump won the Keystone State by fewer than 44,300 votes overall, he won the 11 counties here by more than 85,000 votes.

“He channeled into something that I saw happen in real time,” says Mr. Fetterman, recalling his own surprise six years ago when he heard that Mr. Trump was campaigning in Monessen, a small town in western Pennsylvania. “I was like, ‘What is Donald Trump doing here?’”

In an interview, he gives Mr. Trump credit for doing something other candidates did not: He “made the case,” Mr. Fetterman says, to voters who felt like they’d been left behind – “people that were rightfully frustrated with bad trade deals, and rightfully frustrated with this sense that you are living in a part of Pennsylvania where its best days were a generation ago.”

“We did lose votes in the union membership rolls to Trump. I mean, that’s a fact,” Mr. Fetterman continues, his phone service cutting in and out as he drives through northern Pennsylvania for campaign events. “You can’t fix anything until you acknowledge the problem.”

The worry among some Democrats, though, is that acknowledging the problem might not be enough. Because while Mr. Biden did win Pennsylvania in 2020, and he cut in on Mr. Trump’s 2016 margins in some of the rural counties around Scranton, he still lost this region by more than 60,500 votes. 

“Fetterman likes to make a lot of the fact that he goes to these small counties, and I do give him credit for his 67-county strategy,” says Christopher Nicholas, who has been a Republican consultant in Pennsylvania for more than three decades. But Mr. Nicholas is skeptical as to whether that effort will pay off in any kind of meaningful way. “If he gets 150 more votes there, it’s not going to make much of a difference.” 

From small-town mayor to national spotlight

For all his “blue collar” street cred, Mr. Fetterman describes his own upbringing as comfortably middle class. The son of an insurance executive, he was raised in a suburb of York, a few hours south of Bethlehem. After getting his undergraduate degree from Albright College in Reading and an MBA from the University of Connecticut, he joined AmeriCorps in Pittsburgh, helping disadvantaged young people earn their GED certificates. He earned a master’s in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, before moving back to the Pittsburgh area, to a small town east of Braddock. In 2005, he was elected mayor, after winning the Democratic primary by one vote. 

“You ever seen Braddock?” Mr. Green of Local 2599 asks, eyebrows raised. A former steel town that has lost more than 80% of its population since World War II, its current population is estimated by the U.S. Census to be fewer than 2,000 people. More than 70% of the town’s residents are Black. About 35% are below the poverty line – almost triple the statewide average. 

Mr. Fetterman served as Braddock’s mayor for 13 years, earning national attention for his efforts to bring new housing, businesses, art, and an urgent care facility to his shrinking and struggling town. A Brazilian immigrant named Gisele Almeida who read about the mayor’s revitalization push was inspired to write him a letter. In 2008, they were married; they now have three children. 

“The way he was brought up, and what he’s doing in Braddock, I leaned on that more than the lieutenant governor thing,” says George Bonser, a retired steelworker who started donating monthly to Mr. Fetterman’s campaign a year ago. 

One incident from his time as mayor has cast a darker shadow. In 2013, Mr. Fetterman was outside with his 4-year-old son when he heard what he thought was a burst of gunfire. Grabbing a shotgun, he stopped a Black man wearing a face mask who was running nearby. Officials later determined that Christopher Miyares was on a jog and was unarmed. 

Local Black leaders – including state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who’s running against Mr. Fetterman in the Senate primary – have criticized his actions. He says he made a split-second decision to try to prevent additional violence, and that he never directly pointed the gun at anyone. He also points to his track record reducing crime in Braddock, where he famously had the date of every violent death during his tenure tattooed on his forearm. The town went more than five years without a homicide. 

To be sure, winning statewide will require doing pretty well everywhere – and for Democrats, the suburbs are increasingly key. At a meeting for local progressive group Lehigh Valley For All – in the same union hall where Mr. Fetterman spoke to union workers the night before – several women cite his ability to win suburban votes as part of their reason for backing him, even if they personally might prefer someone else.

“I loved Malcolm Kenyatta. He was my jam,” says Kathy Harrington, who founded the group with her son David after the 2016 election. When Mr. Kenyatta won his seat in 2018, he became one of the youngest members of the Pennsylvania legislature and the first openly-LGBTQ person of color ever elected to either chamber. 

“But we have to be pragmatic about how we can win,” Ms. Harrington adds. “I think John Fetterman appeals to just about everybody – even people in the middle of the state.” In their endorsement rankings of candidates, Lehigh Valley For All gave Mr. Fetterman three stars, Mr. Kenyatta two stars, and Mr. Lamb one. 

A former Marine and moderate Democrat, Mr. Lamb became a rising star in the Democratic Party when he won a conservative district north of Pittsburgh in a 2018 special election. He has since been reelected twice, and was widely expected to be the Senate Democratic front-runner before the primary got underway. But his campaign has lagged far behind in fundraising and in the polls, a reflection perhaps of the challenges more centrist candidates are facing at a time when many Democratic base voters and donors have moved left. 

If Mr. Fetterman wins the primary, Mr. Nicholas asserts that his progressive stances on issues will make him easy to attack in a general election. “Once you get past his appearance and demeanor, he’s still a guy who is wrong for [working-class voters] on the two key issues that motivate a lot of them: guns and abortion,” says the GOP consultant. Although a gun owner, Mr. Fetterman has advocated for “common sense” gun control measures.

Still, supporters like Mr. Green are convinced Mr. Fetterman will prove to be that rare Democratic candidate who can win over a wide swath of voters from across the political spectrum. 

“He dresses like a biker, he’s built like a steelworker, and he has a Harvard education,” says Mr. Green. “I mean, we got it all in this one guy.”