(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., speaks during a campaign event in York, Pa., Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — When Democrat John Fetterman got elected to Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat, many backers hoped he’d challenge convention and the status quo.
He did and has — just not in the way many had expected.
Fetterman has broken with his party on some policy matters and warmed to President-elect Donald Trump, a man he bashed on the 2024 campaign trail as a “felon” who is “obsessed with revenge.” Fetterman later became the first Senate Democrat to meet with Trump since the election.
In fact, Fetterman has warmed to Trump so much that some in his party are quietly disavowing the man they supported in 2022, when the Pennsylvanian easily won a three-candidate primary and survived a stroke amid a high-pressure campaign to become the only Democrat to flip a Republican Senate seat that year.
Christine Jacobs, who founded Represent PA, an organization to help elect Democratic women to Pennsylvania’s legislature, said the Democrats she’s talking to are both disappointed and concerned by Fetterman’s dalliance with Trump.
Their worry, Jacobs said, is that “Trump can say he’s talking to Democrats like John Fetterman, but it’s not going to change what he does and it’ll end up looking like John Fetterman’s being used.”
Fetterman’s approach is reminding some Democrats of former Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both of whom clashed with their party during President Joe Biden’s term, became political independents and didn’t run for reelection.
Still, Fetterman — who often mocked Manchin during his 2022 Senate run — isn’t the only one adjusting to the new political reality.
Democrats are grappling with election losses across battleground states, including Pennsylvania, that gave Trump and his party control of the White House and Congress. Democrats are weighing how much to challenge Trump and whether to embrace some of his policies as they try to rebuild their coalition.
“I haven’t changed my core values throughout out all this,” Fetterman told KDKA-AM radio in Pittsburgh on Thursday. But, he said, engaging with Republicans is “one of the reasons why they elected me, they wanted me to do these things.”
Now Pennsylvania’s senior senator, Fetterman had a difficult start to his Senate career. He was diagnosed with auditory processing disorder, a complication from the stroke, and checked himself into the hospital for depression just one month after taking office.
Six weeks later, Fetterman returned to the Senate seemingly transformed — joking with colleagues and shedding his suit-and-tie for the hoodies and shorts that had long been his trademark.
He quickly made waves — for instance, lambasting then-Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., for remaining in office while facing bribery charges. Menendez was convicted last year.
After Hamas attacked Israel, Fetterman became an outspoken supporter of Israel on an issue that had firmly divided Democrats.
Now, Fetterman has become the only Senate Democrat to meet with Trump, after flying to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last weekend. Fetterman said it was only reasonable to meet with the incoming president in what Fetterman has described as a good and honest conversation that lasted for over an hour.
“And I can only see good things emerging from that,” Fetterman told KDKA.
For his part, Trump told the Washington Examiner that they had a “totally fascinating meeting” and that Fetterman is a “commonsense person” and “not liberal or conservative.”
Some Democrats say Fetterman is a smart politician who is acknowledging political reality.
Mustafa Rashed, a Philadelphia-based Democratic strategist, said Pennsylvania should be considered a Republican state after Trump’s second victory there in three tries and the GOP’s down-ballot trouncing of Democrats in November’s statewide races.
“He’s in a red state,” Rashed said. “Of course he’s got to go meet with him. And if you want to continue to represent a red state, of course you’ve got to meet with the president.”
Fetterman — who is among 10 Senate Democrats representing states won by Trump — is distinguishing himself in other ways.
He’s met with several of Trump’s Cabinet picks — unlike his fellow Democrats — and pledged to vote for some, even posing for photos with a thumb’s-up, which Trump often strikes in photos with well-wishers.
Fetterman is also not dismissing Trump’s eyebrow-raising idea of acquiring Greenland, the massive and rare earth mineral-rich Danish territory. On Fox News, Fetterman called buying Greenland “a responsible conversation” and compared it to the Louisiana Purchase.
He co-sponsored a GOP bill to detain unauthorized immigrants accused of certain crimes and helped get it past a procedural hurdle in the Senate. Amid brewing Democratic opposition, Fetterman remarked on Fox News that if enough Democrats couldn’t join with Republicans to pass the bill “then that’s a reason why we lost” the 2024 election.
Democratic strategists note Fetterman forged his political career largely on his own, independently from the party.
As a small-town mayor in Braddock, Fetterman became a minor celebrity for his looks — he’s 6-foot-8 and tattooed with a shaved head — and his efforts to put the depressed former steel town back on the map.
He endorsed insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016’s presidential primary and ran from the left against the party-backed Democrat in 2016’s Senate primary. When the state Democratic Party looked to endorse a candidate in 2022’s three-way primary, Fetterman shrugged it off as an “inside game.”
Jamie Perrapato, executive director of Turn PA Blue, which helps organize and train campaign volunteers, said she’s seeing a lot of outrage on the left over Fetterman engaging with Trump. But nobody should be surprised, she said.
Fetterman is a “wild card,” Perrapato said, and if anyone thought he’d fall in line with Senate Democratic leadership, “they were crazy.”
Fetterman’s drift has given rise to whispers that he may change his registration.
Last month, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Fetterman said that he’s not leaving the Democratic Party, but that meeting Trump nominees and aligning with some GOP policy views is part of “representing the kind of state that we have in Pennsylvania.”
Still, Fetterman hasn’t backed away from his bedrock issues, such as support for labor unions, abortion rights or LGBT rights.
He has had close relationships with some top Pennsylvania Democrats, including former Sen. Bob Casey, and Jim Burn, a former state Democratic Party chairman, said Fetterman campaigned hard for Vice President Kamala Harris before she lost to Trump.
“Nobody can say John Fetterman was hedging bets for the Republicans,” Burn said, “because he was working his tail off for Kamala Harris all over the state.”
