Opinion | John Fetterman is Running a Test that Democrats Need to Watch – POLITICO

Then, he did something really remarkable: He showed up again.

That candidate is John Fetterman, who secured the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvanias May primary with a robust 59 percent of the vote and currently holds the lead in general election polling.

Fetterman lived up to his Every County, Every Vote slogan. On a single Saturday in early May, for example, he visited five counties in north-central Pennsylvania, part of the states rural T the vast area which form a big T on the map between the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas and north to the New York state line.

Ten days later, in spite of a stroke that hospitalized him just a few days before the primary, Fetterman carried all 67 counties in the Democratic primary. In doing so, Fetterman didnt just attend to the rural, he attended to what he often called the ruby red parts of the Keystone State. Trump carried all five of the counties Fetterman visited on that day in early May Clinton, Potter, Tioga, Bradford and Northumberland and he did so with at least 65 percent of the vote. In Potter County, four of five voters picked Trump. Many Democrats might see those counties as a waste of time, but in the primary, at least, showing up worked for Fetterman: He got 77 percent of the vote.

Fetterman is hardly the first Democratic candidate to make a show of an every-county tour. Indeed, it used to be the norm. When I was growing up in rural Arkansas in the 1970s and 80s, I recall Gov. Bill Clinton passing through my hometown each election cycle. (My family reminisced fondly for years about the day my sister, a teenaged waitress at Pearls Caf, served Clinton coffee and a slice of pie.) Clinton showed up even though my county was home to a measly 8,000 folks, of whom less than a few thousand voted. Its just how retail politics was done back in the day.

More recently, Beto ORourke conducted a 254-county campaign in 2018 when he ran against Ted Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas. ORourke lost, but by just 3 percent, and he and his running mate for lieutenant governor are now going out of their way to show up in the Lone Star States rural reaches. Likewise Chris Jones, Democratic nominee for governor of Arkansas, is on a 75-county tour of the Natural State as he challenges the Republican heir apparent, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

But Fetterman may be the first candidate in recent memory to have visited each county in his state not once, but twice. When Fetterman became Pennsylvanias lieutenant governor in 2019, he undertook a 67-county listening tour about cannabis legalization. Columnist Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer suggests this laid the groundwork for Fettermans widespread popularity, observing that when Fetterman returned to each county as a candidate for Senate, he was shrouded in the purple haze of a political rock star.

Fettermans primary strategy was, of course, the very antithesis of New York Sen. Chuck Schumers dismissal of a voting bloc Democrats used to rely on: For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, Schumer said, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. That was in the summer of 2016, and the senator was soon proved wrong. Pennsylvania was credited (or blamed, depending on your politics), along with Michigan and Wisconsin, with Hillary Clintons loss of the presidency. Trump beat her by about 44,000 votes in 2016 to win Pennsylvanias 20 Electoral College votes. (Biden, who often referenced his scrappy Scranton roots, recovered in 2020 with a slightly wider margin of victory, 81,000 votes.)

The attention a high-profile candidate like Fetterman has paid to rural areas of his state may begin to ease the rural inferiority complex thats been festering for decades, as rural economies have stagnated, small towns have lost population and country folks have become the butt of jokes. One 27-year-old woman in Westmoreland County, part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area that struggles against the Pennsyltucky stereotype, praised Fetterman for showing up and speaking bluntly. Were not just silly hillbillies, she told a New York Times reporter.

Fetterman has serious street cred when he speaks about crummy job markets and regional inequalities that bog down many nonmetro communities. Before seeking statewide office, he served for 13 years as mayor of Braddock, a down-and-out city of 1,721 near Pittsburgh. Fetterman has continued to live in Braddock with his family, in a converted car dealership even after he was elected lieutenant governor in 2018.

Issues of place what rural sociologists call uneven development or spatial inequality have long been front and center for Fetterman, as in his 2018 response to the Ballotpedia survey, I am most passionate about policies that help our forgotten communities. Fettermans wife, Gisele, struck a similar chord on the night of his primary victory. This race were running, its a race for every small town, for every person who calls those small towns home and for every person whos considered leaving because they didnt see enough opportunities.

Many Pennsylvanians are presumably drawn to Fettermans everyman persona. He wears hoodies and gym shorts on the campaign trail, speaks Pennsylvania vernacular including yinz and youse, and Stillers and Birds. Even his long-time failure to look after his health the cause of his stroke is something many rural voters can relate to as rural hospitals close and health care gets harder to access. Thats on top of the rugged, self-sufficient mindset associated with rural culture that leads many especially men to forego medical care.

Fetterman doesnt try to sound like a Republican. His policy positions are left of centersometimes pretty far left of center on everything except fracking, which he supports. He favors criminal justice reform, raising the minimum wage, supporting the LGBTQ community, and legalizing dreamers. Hes even in favor of abolishing the filibuster if thats what it takes to advance a progressive agenda.

When it comes to abortion rights and unions, Fetterman has been known to use the word sacred, and he has been particularly vocal since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. When it comes to unions, even Fettermans dogs with their own Twitter account have gotten in on the action, expressing excitement about the unionization of Pittsburgh area Starbucks stores:

Given that some of these positions especially those on social and cultural issues surely rankle Pennsylvanias rural moderates, Fettermans popularity has probably risen not because of his stances, but rather in spite of them.

It may be that Fettermans personal appeal permits him to move the needle on voters political stances, pulling them along with his agenda. Fetterman may be to white working-class and rural voters in Pennsylvania what Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow is to suburban moms: the politician whose conviction, leadership and relatability brings others along on progressive positions, e.g., support for LGBTQ youth, that might otherwise give those voters pause, or cause them to balk outright. If John Fetterman believes it, they may reason, Ill give it some thought. Maybe hes got a point.

Whatever happens in the general election, Fettermans rural success in the primary raises the question: Why arent more Democratic candidates pursuing rural voters like Fetterman has?

Politicians and political consultants offer several excuses. Theres the discomfort candidates, as well as their staff, may feel when going into presumptively hostile territory. Some Democrats assume rural Americas a lost cause, not only because rural folks lean Republican, but also because of an assumption that they are yesterdays news, with little to contribute to the 21st century economy.

Plus, theres a widespread assumption that campaigns just dont get enough bang for their buck in rural places, where door knocking is inefficient because houses are scattered across the countryside rather than clustered along walkable streets. Its the same urban-centric thinking that keeps all sorts of institutions from investing in rural people and places: a belief you dont get a high enough return on investment where you cant achieve economies of scale.

If Fetterman had bought that line of thinking, none of the places he visited on Saturday, May 7 would have been deemed worth his time. None has more than 10,000 residents, and three have populations hovering around just 3,000. All are in nonmetro counties, defined as fewer than 100,000 residents. Wouldnt Fetterman have been wiser to spend that day in one of the states metropolitan areas, where critical masses of voters reside? After all, to make those five stops, Fetterman spent more than five hours driving 245 miles to get from one town to the next. And that doesnt count the three hours it took him to travel each way from his Braddock home to this part of north central Pennsylvania. How many voters did Fetterman reach on those nonmetro appearances, conventional political wisdom might ask? Did he convert any voters who werent already in his camp?

Fetterman apparently wasnt thinking about it that way. Hes running for state-wide office, which means that there are no gerrymandered districts to fall back on and a rural vote counts as much as an urban or suburban one. By visiting rural areas, the signal Fetterman sent to all rural Pennsylvanians all red Pennsylvanians is a powerful one. He saw them. He invested his time and energy in them, thus responding to a perennial rural complaint that politicians and mainstream society generally forgets or neglects them.

Its clear that this worked in the primary, and the question is whether that success will carry through to the general election. The truth is that in statewide races, rural voters can provide Democrats a margin of victory even if their town or county is ruby red. This was evident in Terry McAuliffes failed campaign for Virginia governor in 2021. McAuliffe didnt connect with rural voters, and he lost badly in nonmetro counties the areas referred to as ROVA, meaning the rest of Virginia. Both the term ROVA treating rural as remainder after that which really matters and McAuliffes neglect of rural voters suggests an urban dismissiveness of the rural. (He believed he had solidly blue NOVA, or Northern Virginia, stitched up.) Its an attitude that permitted Glenn Youngkin to gain the governors mansion; Youngkin outperformed Trumps 2020 numbers in rural places, giving him an edge McAuliffe could not overcome when he got less suburban support than hed anticipated.

Fetterman, similarly, will have to rack up huge margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh if he doesnt chip away at Republican dominance in the hinterlands. Its even possible that his strategy to cultivate support from across the state may be an added attraction to progressive metro voters; after all, the every-county approach has a unity vibe that may appeal to folks all along the rural-urban continuum.

Indeed, the election outcome could turn on mid-sized metropolitan counties like York (where Fetterman grew up) and Lancaster, where tens of thousands of votes are at stake. Those counties, considered part of the neglected T because theyre not Pittsburgh and Philly, were the last two places Fetterman visited before his stroke. More than 64,000 Democratic votes were cast in York and Lancaster counties combined in the primary. Thats more than the margin of Hillary Clintons 2016 Pennsylvania loss. Fetterman carried those counties with 80 percent and 76 percent, respectively, of the Democratic vote.

Fetterman still has his work cut out for him, of course. A national survey in February showed that two out of three rural voters view the Democratic Party unfavorably. Fettermans opponent, Republican nominee Mehmet Oz (televisions Dr. Oz), thus has some ready-made traction in the states rural reaches because of the R by his name on the ballot. Theres also the matter of Trumps endorsement of Oz, though Oz has recently been distancing himself from the former president.

With Fetterman still recovering from his stroke, hes unlikely to get back to each of Pennsylvanias counties before November. But it probably doesnt matter. Fetterman has already accumulated critical capital in the T, which may be enough to counter the toxic D by his name. And his unconventional rural strategy as much as his unconventional persona could help give him the W in a tight race, one with huge national implications for the balance of the Senate.

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Opinion | John Fetterman is Running a Test that Democrats Need to Watch - POLITICO