Would John Fetterman Make a Good Senator?

Some very important elections are scheduled in the U.S. this November. Among the most important are elections in several states for the office of United States Senator, and one of the most critical of those elections is the one in Pennsylvania which pits the current Lieutenant Governor, Democrat John Fetterman, against Republican Mehmet Oz.

It's possible that the party which controls the Senate going forward will hinge on who wins this election in PA.

Oz is a very accomplished medical doctor but has been a rather lackluster campaigner so far. He's also something of a carpetbagger, having moved to PA from New Jersey in order to run for the Senate.

Fetterman, on the other hand, has adopted the Biden strategy of campaigning hardly at all, which is probably smart because the last thing he needs is for people to start asking him questions about his record.

The most impressive thing about Mr. Fetterman is his size (6'8", 300+ lbs.). After that one looks in vain to find anything which commends him to a voter looking for some indication of achievement.

Consider this from The Washington Free Beacon:

As mayor of Braddock, Pa., [Braddock has a population of 2000 so being elected mayor is no great accomplishment] Senate hopeful John Fetterman (D.) ordered a police officer to dig up dirt on one of his political rivals, according to a town solicitor whom Fetterman later fired.

In a heated 2009 mayoral campaign, Braddock solicitor Lawrence Shields accused Fetterman of "abuse of your mayoral authority" for ordering a Braddock cop to obtain a police report from a 2004 domestic incident involving Fetterman’s challenger, Jayme Cox.

Braddock city council members called for Fetterman’s arrest for violating state laws regarding the handling of criminal information in cases where charges are dropped.

Three years later, Fetterman cast the tie-breaking vote—his only vote in 13 years as Braddock mayor—to fire Shields as solicitor, purportedly to save money in the borough’s budget.

Fetterman said he was an "enthusiastic yes" in favor of ousting Shields.

The incident is another black mark on Fetterman’s tenure as mayor of the dilapidated steel town, which the progressive candidate has touted on the campaign trail as evidence of his blue collar bona fides.

Fetterman admitted to asking a police officer for the report on Cox and discussing it with others. But he denied pressuring the officer to dig up the information and said it was necessary to inform voters about Cox, who had charges dropped after taking a domestic abuse class.

Fetterman also faced allegations from city officials of failing to perform his duties as mayor.

He missed more than one-third of council meetings during his tenure, the Free Beacon reported. Jesse Brown, the president of the city council when Fetterman was in office, said he "should have been at all council meetings" but stopped showing up after multiple confrontations over his official duties.

One of the most damaging facts in Mr. Fetterman's record is an incident that occurred in 2013 that has resonances with the Ahmaud Aubery killing:

In 2013, Fetterman pointed a shotgun at an unarmed black jogger he wrongly suspected of firing a gun near his house. The jogger, Christopher Miyares, said Fetterman aimed a shotgun at his chest. Fetterman admitted in a television interview that he "may have broken the law," but he has refused to apologize for the incident.

At The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro calls Fetterman a "Professionally Useless Person," by which he means that he's managed to rise to prominence without ever having had a real job or actually done much of anything:

Fetterman served as the mayor of Braddock — an impoverished city of fewer than 2,000 people — for more than a decade on a salary of $1,800 because his parents gave him an allowance of tens of thousands of dollars per year. Meanwhile, his sister allowed him to rent an apartment virtually for free.

It's also worthy of note that Mr. Fetterman is an enthusiastic supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders and his socialist policies:

“In 2016, Fetterman signed a pledge to support the so-called 'Keep It in the Ground Act,' which was designed to ban new oil, gas, and coal leasing on federal land,” Shapiro said.

“He has pushed repeatedly for pardons or commutations for violent felons. He said Pennsylvania could release one-third of its inmates and be just as safe.”

Indeed, Fetterman has repeatedly nodded to drug decriminalization and monitored injection sites, as well as defended Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is currently under investigation from Republican and Democratic members of the Pennsylvania House for failing to enforce the city’s laws.

Shortly before his primary, Mr. Fetterman suffered a stroke which causes him to slur his speech, repeat himself and makes it difficult for him to maintain his train of thought. This probably accounts for why he only rarely does public appearances.

His campaign has produced several ads mocking Oz, fairly, for being a New Jersey resident who moved to Pennsylvania for the senate race, but he himself is vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy, having taken "a vacation to the Jersey Shore — security team in tow — all while telling Americans to continue locking down,” Shapiro observed.

At the moment Fetterman is polling four points ahead of Oz, which is within the margin of error, but it'll be interesting to see whether that lead holds up once facts about his record, or lack thereof, become more widely known.

One thing that might close the gap would be Mr. Fetterman's response were he forced to answer five questions:

• Mr. Fetterman, do you believe men can get pregnant?
• Can you tell us what a woman is?
• Do you believe biological males should be allowed to compete against females in women's sports?
• If that black jogger you once held at gunpoint had decided to ignore you and keep on jogging, what would you have done?
• Would you have threatened him with that shotgun were he a white jogger?

The first three questions would force him to choose between his progressive social positions and the convictions of a majority of PA voters. The last two questions would make his action appear to have been clearly motivated by racial prejudice.