When John Fetterman won the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, he succeeded, it seemed, by vibration. The Democrat had an advanced degree from Harvard but did not mention it. He had been in public office for almost two decades, but he didn't act like one. It was hard to imagine his massive frame and American helicopter aesthetic on the floor of the US Senate.
That's exactly why Pennsylvania Democrats and they hoped most of their fellow voters in November thought they belonged there.
In the end, these fellow voters did. Fetterman defeated Republican Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race Tuesday night. "We bet on the people of Pennsylvania - and you didn't let us down," he tweeted after the race was announced. "And I won't let you down. Thank you."
Fetterman was not the first choice of the Democratic gatekeepers. They wanted Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Penn.), whose 2018 special election win for a House seat in suburban Pittsburgh elevated the former prosecutor and Iraq war veteran to the quintessential Democratic candidate for the post-Donald Trump era.
Oz also didn't favor the Republican rank-and-file. They preferred former hedge fund CEO David McCormick over the surgeon turned TV star. It turned out that a clean-cut Lamb never stood a chance against Fetterman in Carhartt, who won every district during the Pennsylvania primary. Oz, meanwhile, limped to victory over McCormick by just 1,000 votes, helped by a late Trump endorsement in the final stretch.
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