Lt. Governor John Fetterman dresses more like a mechanic than a politician. He stands at 6’8” with no hair, is painted with tattoos, and often wears button-down T-shirts to campaign events. The mayor turned lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, is running for US Senator on a campaign to win marginalized groups’ votes. His primary issues are health care, gun control, climate justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, and minimum wage. He is running for Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat in the 2022 elections. Republican incumbent Pat Toomey is not running again, allowing for the perfect opportunity for a newcomer to take over. Although this is not Fetterman’s first time in the ring, he ran for a senate seat in 2016.  

Senator Fetterman plans to legalize weed, increase the minimum wage to $15/hr, and give everyone access to healthcare. Fetterman supports the LGBTQIA+ community and often shares that he officiated marriages between LGBTQIA+ people before gay marriage was legal. He sees the legalization of marijuana as an opportunity to advance the economy and get justice. On his campaign website, he says, “It’s time to end the failed war on drugs.”

As mayor of Braddock, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Fetterman cracked down on gun violence, and they had no deaths from guns for five years. To commemorate that, he has the dates of the days they lost someone in his community to gun violence on his right arm. Bringing down gun violence in his community is what he is most proud of in his time as a public servant. Fetterman is also highly against mass incarceration and wants to give people second chances in Pennsylvania and around the country. 

Fetterman’s central focus on the campaign is uniting people who voted for Trump because they felt left behind by the American political system and the Democratic party. Former President Trump targeted those communities by hosting rallies in many small towns in Pennsylvania to make them feel seen; Fetterman thinks that he can win over their votes by standing up for and relating to these individuals. 

Climate justice is another significant campaign promise of Fetterman’s. He supports the Green New Deal and recognizes environmental racism as a consequential problem in America. As a town that is 80% Black, Braddock faces large amounts of environmental racism in this postindustrial society. Fetterman promotes a full transition to clean energy that creates millions of safe new jobs for Americans along the way as soon as possible. 

In a campaign video released by Fetterman about gun control, he talks about an experience he had in Braddock with his son. They were in the front yard when they heard some “gunshots,” and they saw a man fleeing an area where many shootings had happened before. He said that he saw the person running towards the elementary school and that since it was so close to the Sandy Hook shooting, Fetterman felt he had to go stop them. That person is Chris Miyares, who says that Fetterman pointed a shotgun at his chest until police arrived. Chris Miyares was just out for a jog, and no shooting occurred. Fetterman released a video in February, different from the gun violence campaign video, explaining what happened, but the two stories do not line up. In Fetterman’s account, he says he never pointed the gun at Miyares; he just had it with him. With the video Fetterman released about gun violence, he never apologized or shed light on the fact that there was no shooting and that police never found a gun on Miyares. 

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