Elections

John Fetterman’s resounding victory in the Democratic Pennsylvania Senate primary was not surprising, but it was uncharacteristic.Pennsylvania Democrats do not ordinarily veer too far from the center lane, and they are cautious about whom they send forward from their primary elections to take on Republicans in general elections. They’re not gamblers, and given the state’s perennially up-for-grabs status and its unforgiving electoral math, you could argue they shouldn’t be.But on Tuesday, Democrats made Mr. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, their nominee to compete for the seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Pat Toomey. (They did it despite Mr. Fetterman’s recent health scare; last week he suffered a stroke, but he said that he was on his way to “a full recovery.”)Conor Lamb, 37, a Pittsburgh-area congressman, would have been a more conventional choice. His House voting record tracks to the center, and he has been compared to the state’s three-term Democratic senator, Bob Casey, a moderate and the son of a former Pennsylvania governor.Mr. Fetterman, 52, offers something different, a new model for Pennsylvania. It is built on quirky personal and political appeal rather than the caution of a traditional Democrat in the Keystone State. With over 80 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Fetterman was more than doubling the total of Mr. Lamb, whose campaign, despite winning many more endorsements from party leaders, never gained momentum.For Democrats, the stakes are high: The outcome may well determine the balance of the evenly divided U.S. Senate, future votes to confirm Supreme Court nominees and much else in our bitterly divided nation.Nearly every story about Mr. Fetterman points out his 6-foot-8 frame, shaved head, tattoos and preferred attire — work clothes from Carhartt, a brand long favored by construction workers and miners and more recently by hip-hop artists. He sometimes attends public events in baggy gym shorts.It is all part of a style that has won him passionate followers among progressive Democrats. Mr. Fetterman has been a frequent presence on MSNBC and is a skilled social media practitioner, with over 400,000 Twitter followers. (His dogs, Levi and Artie, have their own Twitter account and more than 25,000 followers.) It can sometimes seem that he skirts the line between being a traditional candidate and an internet influencer.“Fetterman doesn’t have supporters so much as full-on fans,” The Philadelphia Inquirer noted during the campaign. “Fans who write songs about him, buy his merch and know his life story.”Mr. Fetterman has served as lieutenant governor since 2019 and, before that, for four terms was the mayor of Braddock, a town east of Pittsburgh with just over 1,700 residents. He vows to conduct a “67-county campaign” — the whole of Pennsylvania.Rebecca Katz, his senior political adviser, told me that she believes the campaign’s mantra of “every county, every vote” is being received with too much skepticism and said that people “haven’t seen what kind of map he can run on in Pennsylvania.”But he still must solve the math of an evenly divided state: A Democrat hoping to win in Pennsylvania has to thread an electoral needle.Mr. Fetterman will face either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick.In the fall, Mr. Fetterman will need to pile up huge winning margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and win by healthy margins in their suburbs and the state’s few other pockets of blue in order to withstand the lopsided totals that Republicans win nearly everywhere else.In less populous counties, as recently as 2008, Barack Obama took 40 percent of the vote or more, but as polarization has increased, Democrats have struggled to get even 25 percent.State Democrats hoped that Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native and senator from neighboring Delaware — and a white septuagenarian running in a state that is whiter and older than the national average — could reverse that trend. But he did only marginally better than Hillary Clinton four years earlier, cutting the margins by a couple of percentage points but hardly reversing the trend of Democrats being routed in the smaller counties.That Mr. Biden could not do better outside the cities and close-in suburbs has made many Democrats pessimistic about what’s possible in those areas. Mr. Fetterman’s background, his attention to the state’s rural communities and his manner — the work clothes, a straightforward speaking style — could make some difference. In the winning Fetterman model, he narrows the massive margins that have been run up by Republicans.His positions do not differ that much from more traditional Democrats’, but some of his central concerns do set him apart. A signature issue has been the legalization of marijuana — “legal weed,” as he calls it. He has flown a flag displaying cannabis leaves from the official lieutenant governor’s office, alongside a rainbow-colored L.G.B.T.Q. banner.The advocacy of legal marijuana may be the rare issue that draws support from unpredictable corners and crosses all kinds of lines — including urban and rural.The lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania has few defined duties, but as chairman of the Board of Pardons, Mr. Fetterman modernized an outdated system and granted clemency in cases where it was long overdue.Mr. Fetterman’s one glaring departure from progressive causes, and a nod to Pennsylvania realpolitik, is that he does not support a ban on fracking, the environmentally questionable hydraulic extraction of natural gas. Tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians have benefited financially from it by selling drilling rights on their land, working in the industry or both.Mr. Fetterman’s most worrisome vulnerability is his appeal to his party’s most dependable voting bloc: Black voters in Philadelphia and the state’s other urban centers, the places where any Democrat running statewide must mine the largest trove of votes. Only about 10 percent of the state’s voters are Black, but they are an essential component of the margins that the party runs up in the cities.Mr. Fetterman’s challenge stems in large part from a 2013 incident in Braddock, when he used his shotgun to stop a Black jogger and detained him until police arrived. Mr. Fetterman, who was mayor at the time, told police he had heard gunshots in the area and suspected the jogger. Police searched the man down and released him after they found no weapon.The incident has come up during the campaign, and Mr. Fetterman’s responses have been awkward, at best.“He has said he did not actually point the gun, but what difference does that make?” said Mark Kelly Tyler, the pastor of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s oldest A.M.E. churches. “Even if he admitted that it was from his implicit bias and says that he has learned from it, that would actually be better. It would be accepted.”Mr. Tyler said that if Mr. Fetterman does not do a better job of explaining it, the incident will be “weaponized on Black talk radio and elsewhere” and used by his opponent in the fall to depress turnout.Mr. Fetterman won by huge margins all across Pennsylvania, with one notable exception: Philadelphia. There, it was a close race against a third Democratic primary candidate, Malcolm Kenyatta, a city resident and the first Black openly gay L.G.B.T.Q. member of the state legislature.With the primary complete, everything is reset. In a big state with six television markets, the candidates will likely combine to spend $200 million or more — much of it, undoubtedly, in an attempt to label each other as too extreme for middle-of-the-road Pennsylvania.Mr. Fetterman’s progressive politics and persona appeal to younger people. They lean to the left and are always potentially influential in any election. But they are also traditionally the least reliable voters, especially in nonpresidential years.In Pennsylvania and all other battleground states, it always comes down to the math. The state’s graying electorate does not always like new things or ideas.Mr. Fetterman is ultimately going to have to go where the votes are. And if he has a problem with Black voters, he will have to solve it.Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town and the Magic of Theater,” which is set in his hometown, Levittown, Pa.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

PITTSBURGH — John Fetterman, the liberal lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who won his state’s Democratic nomination for Senate on Tuesday, seemed to be cruising into what is shaping up as one of the most closely watched general elections in the country this fall. Then a stroke upended his plans.Mr. Fetterman, the 6-foot-8, hoodie-wearing former mayor of Braddock, Pa., was not a favorite of the party establishment, but he electrified some progressive voters and a broader slice of the Democratic electorate that embraced his blunt-spoken, accessible style and welcomed his pledges to fight aggressively for party priorities in Washington.“I’m just doing my thing,” he said in an interview last week. “I’m just a dude that shows up and just talks about what I believe in, you know?”After canceling campaign events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Fetterman, 52, announced that he had had a stroke, was recovering and had not suffered any cognitive damage.He was still in the hospital on Tuesday, when his campaign announced that he would undergo “a standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator,” adding, “It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke.”It was unclear when he would be able to resume campaigning.The health scare carried ramifications far beyond Pennsylvania. Democrats hold a majority in the Senate only by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. The party’s vulnerability had already been highlighted when Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico suffered a stroke in January.It also seemed jarring given Mr. Fetterman’s vigorous public image; he often was dressed as if he’d just left the gym.“He may not look like a Senate candidate for New York or California, but he’s just fine for Pennsylvania,” said Ed Rendell, a Democratic former governor of the state. “He’s a very believable candidate for the working class.”Mr. Fetterman, who holds a degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, served for 13 years as the mayor of Braddock, where he attracted attention for his efforts to revitalize a struggling steel town — and scrutiny over a 2013 episode in which he brandished a shotgun to stop an unarmed Black jogger, telling the police he had heard gunshots.He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 but gained an enthusiastic following, and went on to defeat an incumbent to win his party’s nomination for lieutenant governor in 2018. In that role, he maintained an active presence around the state, building name recognition that played an important role in his primary victory.“He spent a lot of time in communities throughout the state,” said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who did not take sides in the primary. “That’s something he’s been able to build on.”Mr. Fetterman also made a name for himself in national progressive circles, receiving the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2018 after he backed Mr. Sanders’s 2016 presidential primary bid. And he gained fresh prominence with a broader range of voters as a cable-television fixture when Pennsylvania’s 2020 votes were being counted.Several months later, he entered the Senate primary, the first major Democratic candidate to jump into the race, and cemented an overwhelming fund-raising advantage over his nearest rivals.Mr. Fetterman campaigned on issues like raising the minimum wage, promoting criminal justice reform and supporting voting rights, abortion rights and protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people.But he attracted just as much attention for his style, and some saw him as skilled at connecting with blue-collar voters. He favored basketball shorts and sweatshirts over button-downs and khakis and spent significant time campaigning in rural, working-class counties that had overwhelmingly voted for former President Donald J. Trump, hoping to improve Democratic margins in those areas.Mr. Fetterman has repeatedly described himself as a progressive in the past, but in the Senate race he did not seek the left-wing mantle. He rejected a suggestion last week that he would join the “Squad,” a group of left-wing members of Congress, should he win.Republicans and some Democrats, however, believe that he may be vulnerable to criticism that he is too far to the left for one of the most closely divided states in the nation, and especially for its more centrist suburbs, which have been vital to recent Democratic gains in the state.“It’s good that Fetterman is going to these areas where Democrats have done poorly in these Republican counties, but I think his bigger challenge is going to be these suburban communities,” said former Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who said he had voted for President Biden.Mr. Dent warned that Mr. Fetterman is seen by some as a “Bernie Sanders Democrat.”The lieutenant governor lives in Braddock with his three children and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the second lady of Pennsylvania, who has embraced the acronym “SLOP” and who, like Mr. Fetterman, has an active social media presence.She insisted that he get checked out after feeling unwell on Friday, the Fettermans said.His campaign said Monday that Mr. Fetterman had been “again evaluated by the neurologist who once again reiterated that John will make a full recovery.” More

The governor grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives in the city now. The shooting has taken on political overtones in the 2022 race for governor of New York.Hours after an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, Gov. Kathy Hochul convened a news conference just blocks away.She mourned for the tight-knit community and for the lives shattered by the cruelty of white supremacy. She spoke of the danger of hatred circulating online. And she talked knowingly of the neighborhood and the streets she had walked — and how it all hit so close to home.Ms. Hochul grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives with her husband in the city’s downtown area, less than four miles from the East Side, the mostly Black neighborhood where a white gunman orchestrated one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent memory.“This is personal” Ms. Hochul said a day later at True Bethel Baptist Church, a Black church one mile away from the site of the shooting. “You’ve hurt our family.”In recent days, Ms. Hochul has called out tech companies that she said were not doing enough to stop the spread of online hate that motivated the gunman, and denounced Washington for its failure to impose what she said should be common-sense gun control laws.On Tuesday, she appeared with President Biden as he visited Buffalo, a postindustrial city in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie. And in the coming days, Ms. Hochul has hinted that she plans to unveil a new gun safety package.With the Democratic primary for governor six weeks away, and Ms. Hochul running for her first full term, the shooting has presented the governor with both an opportunity to engage with voters in a moment of crisis and a challenge to demonstrate whether she is up to the task.From Opinion: The Buffalo ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.The Times Editorial Board: The mass shooting in Buffalo was an extreme expression of a political worldview that has become increasingly central to the G.O.P.’s identity.Jamelle Bouie: G.O.P. politicians and conservative media personalities did not create the idea of the “great replacement,” but they have adopted it.Paul Krugman: There is a direct line from Republicans’ embrace of crank economics, to Jan. 6, to Buffalo.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher hosts a discussion on the role of internet platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch in the attack.Indeed, the shooting, which law enforcement officials said was motivated by a white supremacist ideology fanned by some factions of the country’s right wing, has swiftly taken on political overtones in the escalating race for governor of New York, where gun violence has become a central issue.One of Ms. Hochul’s primary opponents, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, was in Buffalo when the shooting occurred. He immediately used the event as a political cudgel, proclaiming on Twitter, “Hochul refuses to make fighting crime a priority. I will.”Mr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat from Long Island, later issued a statement that took issue with Ms. Hochul’s record in Congress and endorsement during that time by the National Rifle Association, which has vehemently opposed gun control measures, including background checks.“That is not leadership,” said Mr. Suozzi, who has received an F rating from the N.R.A. “It is hypocritical and it does nothing to protect New Yorkers from this kind of tragedy happening again.”Ms. Hochul, at a Sunday prayer service in Buffalo, lives less than four miles from the scene of the shooting.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesRepresentative Lee Zeldin, a Suffolk County Republican who is running to be his party’s nominee for governor, issued a statement over the weekend that pushed for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York State, which was declared unconstitutional nearly two decades ago.“Those who commit fatal hate crimes, acts of terrorism and other extreme violence should be brought to justice, and in some of these cases, the only fitting form of justice is the death penalty,” said Mr. Zeldin, who, visited the shooting scene on Monday to pay his respects to those killed, but did not take questions from reporters and avoided overtly political remarks.But for Ms. Hochul, the shooting has more obvious resonance.“I think the governor feels it on a whole different level, because she’s passed by the Tops, if not been in the Tops,” said Darius G. Pridgen, a pastor at the True Bethel Baptist church.In the days since the shooting, the governor has visited churches and gone on television and radio, giving interviews to nearly a dozen outlets, from MSNBC and CNN to Buffalo’s long-running morning radio show, “Janet & Nick in the Morning.”She has highlighted the state’s existing gun safety laws, seizing the opportunity to emphasize actions she has already taken as governor, such as an interstate task force that she assembled last year to tackle the illegal flow of guns.And she has denounced the killings as “white supremacist acts of terrorism,” calling on white Americans to take a stand against racism.“To say that she is taking this personally is to say the least,” said Jeremy Zellner, the chair of the Democratic Party in Erie County.The governor has lived with her husband in a condo in the waterfront area of the city’s downtown area since 2013, shortly after she lost her seat in Congress — though she often splits her time between Albany and New York City since becoming governor in August.Ms. Hochul got her start in politics as a member of the town board in Hamburg, a suburban town just south of Buffalo that is overwhelmingly white. While she briefly represented the East Side as clerk of Erie County, the House district she was elected to in 2011 was largely rural and suburban and did not include Buffalo.Ms. Hochul, at a news conference on Sunday, once represented the East Side of Buffalo when she was Erie County’s clerk.Malik Rainey for The New York TimesShe later helped promote economic development projects and job training programs aimed at the city as lieutenant governor to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. As governor, she visited the East Side as recently as March to tout the construction of new affordable housing.One of Ms. Hochul’s major priorities for the region involves addressing the racial and economic inequalities that were exacerbated by a stretch of highway that was built through the East Side. Ms. Hochul is spearheading a plan to reconnect neighborhoods that were divided by the Kensington Expressway over 60 years ago, saying last month that there was $1 billion available in federal and state funds for a project to potentially cover the expressway, or part of it.“She’s from the suburbs, but in no way, shape or form a stranger to that part of the city,” said State Senator Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents parts of the city’s West Side. “She’s a known commodity in terms of boots on the ground in neighborhood centers.”The mass shooting came as New York’s gubernatorial primary, scheduled for June 28, looms large.Ms. Hochul has amassed a gargantuan $20 million war chest and a huge polling advantage, but her campaign has faltered in recent weeks, battered by the arrest of her lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, on corruption charges, and criticism of a deal she secured to subsidize the construction of a new football stadium for the Buffalo Bills with taxpayer money.Mirroring many Democrats nationwide, Ms. Hochul had recently pivoted her attention to the likelihood that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, radically redrawing the national landscape for women’s health care. Ms. Hochul has begun speaking more extensively about making New York a refuge for reproductive rights, vowing to enshrine abortion rights into state law and using her executive authority to create a $35 million fund to support abortion providers.Her campaign released a television ad this week that highlighted her commitment on the issue, even as the shooting’s aftermath overtook most of her public schedule.And on Monday, Ms. Hochul took the stage with Mr. Biden at a community center, seeking to draw parallels between Buffalo and the president’s hometown, Scranton, Pa. She said both leaders were used to their native cities failing to get the “respect” they deserved.“I’m a daughter of Buffalo, and I’m so proud to be governor,” she said ahead of the president’s remarks. “But right now I’m a daughter of Buffalo.” More

Chuck Edwards, a three-term state senator and business owner, has edged out Representative Madison Cawthorn in the Republican primary for a House seat representing North Carolina’s 11th District.Luke Ball, a representative for Mr. Cawthorn, said late Tuesday that the congressman had called Mr. Edwards to concede. Mr. Edwards’s narrow triumph was called by The Associated Press.The outcome served as a rebuke of Mr. Cawthorn, a right-wing firebrand and the youngest freshman in Congress, who was once seen as a rising star of the Republican Party.It is also a significant victory for the old guard Republicans in North Carolina and Washington who in recent months had been feuding with Mr. Cawthorn over his personal and political errors and foibles.Mr. Edwards, 61, has served in the state Legislature since 2016 and has built a staunch conservative brand by pushing measures to overhaul tax laws, enact a constitutional amendment for voter identification, and require county sheriffs to work with immigration enforcement agencies.He entered the race with a natural constituency of traditional Republican primary voters, as well as endorsements from Senator Thom Tillis and most of the members of the Legislature in his district. Like Mr. Cawthorn, he was born and raised in rural Hendersonville, a city of 14,000 south of Asheville.Mr. Edwards will now face Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a Christian minister and organizer who is the Democratic nominee, for the House seat overseeing a largely rural and working-class Republican stronghold tucked against the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains.Mr. Edwards’s triumph capped months of political turbulence for Mr. Cawthorn, 26, who faced an avalanche of bad press and political attacks from establishment Republicans at home and in Washington over his numerous run-ins with the law, childish behavior and sexual innuendo, and what his opponents described as a lack of political leadership.The winner on Tuesday had needed to draw only 30 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in a crowded field split among seven other challengers. But late Tuesday, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Cawthorn were both clearing the 30 percent threshold.Mr. Cawthorn had hoped to win by heavily promoting his endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump. But Mr. Cawthorn, who has been in a wheelchair since a car crash that almost took his life at 18, struggled to overcome a series of old and new personal and political errors. He previously faced accusations that he had lied about key parts of his background and that he had been sexually and verbally aggressive toward women.In recent months, he also has been accused of engaging in insider trading, charged with driving with a revoked license and stopped for trying to bring a gun through airport security — a second time. Photos and videos of him partying and emulating sexual antics circulated.In March, he said on a conservative YouTube channel that people he had admired in Washington had invited him to orgies and used cocaine. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, told reporters he had spoken with Mr. Cawthorn and told him that he had lost trust in him.But perhaps most damaging was Mr. Cawthorn’s track record of missing important votes in Congress and his announcement last year that he would run in a new district near Charlotte, only to change his mind and return to his old district after the new district was redrawn and tilted Democratic.It also changed the dynamics in the race, providing the opening that Mr. Edwards and Michele Woodhouse, the elected Republican chair of Mr. Cawthorn’s district and once one of Mr. Cawthorn’s staunch supporters, needed to jump into the electoral contest.One of Mr. Edwards’s tag lines was “Always for the mountains,” a jab at Mr. Cawthorn for moving away. More

Doug Mastriano, a central figure in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, won the state’s Republican primary for governor on Tuesday, making the general election a referendum on democracy in the place where American representative government was born.The Associated Press declared Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel and two-term state senator, the winner over a crowded field of Republican candidates. In the campaign’s final days, his opponents mounted an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to consolidate support around a rival, former Representative Lou Barletta.In his short time in public office, Mr. Mastriano, 58, has emerged as Pennsylvania’s leading far-right figure.He funded buses to shuttle supporters to the rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the attack on the Capitol. During his run for governor, he has barred the news media from attending his campaign events and has appeared with proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory.At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Mastriano proposed a public registry of people who had tested positive for the virus, but he later campaigned against mask-wearing and vaccines.On Saturday, after public and private polling showed Mr. Mastriano with a sizable lead over Mr. Barletta and the rest of the Republican field, Mr. Trump endorsed him, citing his fight to overturn the election.“We’re going to win on May 17,” Mr. Mastriano said at a rally last week in Erie, Pa. “And to quote a friend of ours, it’s going to be huge.” In Pennsylvania, the Republican primary for governor played second fiddle to the state’s Senate contest, into which far more money flowed. Only one of the candidates for governor, Bill McSwain, a former U.S. attorney, had enough money to air television advertising in the final weeks of the campaign.Mr. Mastriano, Mr. Barletta and the others were left to grapple for limited attention from the news media.Mr. Trump’s late endorsement of Mr. Mastriano infuriated some of the former president’s earliest supporters in Pennsylvania. Former Representative Tom Marino, who along with Mr. Barletta stumped across the state for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, condemned the endorsement at an event for Mr. Barletta on Saturday.“Where in the hell is the loyalty?” Mr. Marino said. “I am very disappointed in the president, the former president. Because apparently the loyalty does not go as far as he says his loyalty does.”If Mr. Mastriano were to win the general election in November, he would have enormous power over how the 2024 presidential election is conducted in Pennsylvania. The governor appoints the secretary of state, who oversees the state’s elections. Mr. Mastriano has already said he would seek to decertify the 2020 results in the state. Democrats nominated Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, who has planned a campaign for governor for years. Mr. Shapiro ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination.In the final weeks before Tuesday’s primary, Mr. Shapiro’s campaign aired advertising across Pennsylvania saying “if Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for,” a not-very-subtle attempt to lift his Mr. Mastriano’s financially struggling campaign among Republican primary voters. Officials in both parties in Pennsylvania believe Mr. Mastriano would be the weakest possible opponent against Mr. Shapiro in the general election.Nick Corasaniti More

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