Fetterman has long been viewed as progressive

US Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania made something abundantly clear almost 18 months ago — regardless of his enthusiastic endorsement of Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016, his long support for the disputed community, and his strong backing of unions and other views aligning him with liberal Democrats.

“I’m not a progressive,” Fetterman, who reportedly faces more staff departures amid concerns about his health and behaviour, told NBC News in December 2023. But even now, nearly four months into the second Trump administration — after backing several Cabinet nominees and supporting both Republican-led immigration legislation and some of the White House’s expansive detention and deportation efforts — several Democratic donors and supporters told the Post-Gazette they have increasingly found Fetterman to be far from the progressive leader they expected. Some Democrats reportedly are already discussing potential primary challengers or replacements if Fetterman resigns — which he says he won’t do. And Republicans are openly supportive of Fetterman and trying to swing him toward the GOP — which he’s said for months isn’t going to happen.

But Fetterman has always been somewhat of a wild card. His stances and actions dating back to his time as mayor of Braddock, a borough of less than 2,000 along the Monongahela River, shows a complicated picture suggesting he was never going to be a “sidekick” to Sanders, I-Vt., or anyone, as Republican Senate opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz tried to insist in 2022. “I always considered him to be somewhat of a populist, maverick contrarian,” Larry Ceisler, a Pennsylvania public affairs executive, told the Post-Gazette. Ceisler, a Democrat, said Fetterman has a rare ability to hold strong views while also coming across as an “empty vessel — and not in a derogatory way.”

“Voters would see in him what they wanted,” he said. “They would project their own beliefs onto him. So if people were progressive, they thought he was progressive because he endorsed Bernie Sanders, but others would think he was ... not necessarily moderate, but willing to be contrarian, to go against the normal Democratic grain.” Experts tell the Post-Gazette that Democrats may be jumping the gun in terms of pushing for Fetterman to resign or be primaried, and that Republicans who have embraced him since he became a leading voice in support of Israel should keep in mind he largely still votes with Democrats. Fetterman’s complicated history on a variety of issues illustrates that he is more of a maverick than any progressive label attached to him a few years ago, said Mike Butler, a Democratic political strategist based in Pittsburgh.

“People just presumed that he’d be progressive on any and every issue, in the same way that Bernie Sanders is, essentially,” Butler said. “But if you really listen to his rhetoric and have watched him, he has always kind of cultivated more of the building trades, more of the communities that were left behind by industrialisation.” In Braddock, Fetterman supported bringing businesses to town, large or small — he didn’t care who wanted to locate there. He also believed he had a “mandate” to experiment in certain areas, despite winning his first mayoral primary by a single vote. Fetterman came to Braddock after serving in AmeriCorps in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, where he taught GED classes and helped set up computer labs. Before he became mayor, he bought an old Presbyterian church in July 2003. In the opening months of 2006, after he was elected, he focused on creating a community center in the space. When teenagers were seen drawing graffiti around town, he said it would be wrong to crack down on them harshly. “What you have is a disenfranchised young person who is disaffected and has few options,” Fetterman said, according to a Post-Gazette article from May 2006. “One shouldn’t make the erroneous assumption that it’s some kind of movement, some kind of criminal element.”

Fetterman has stood against the Mon-Fayette Expressway, a planned state highway expansion project that, in some versions, would have cut through Braddock. He was supportive of new housing projects in the borough, saying the community needed more housing and development where many vacant lots were scattered throughout the area. And he fought for months to save UPMC Braddock hospital, although his and other elected officials’ efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

It was one of the few times that many council members, who frequently clashed with him when he was mayor, agreed with Fetterman. Fetterman vetoed a three-mill tax increase in the 2012 budget from the borough council, saying it would be especially burdensome on elderly homeowners. Historically, he opposed any proposed tax increases the borough council considered. Fetterman also wrote letters to the editor and some columns for the Post-Gazette, where — in April 2013 — he argued that taxing nonprofits like UPMC and others would be bad public policy.

This placed him at odds with Ed Gainey and Corey O’Connor, the two Democratic candidates for Pittsburgh mayor this year. Fetterman performed the first same-sex wedding ceremony in Allegheny County in August 2013 — defying a statewide ban. As lieutenant governor, Fetterman trumpeted his support of marijuana legalization by hanging a large marijuana-plant banner from his office balcony.

He was also chair of the Board on Pardons at the time, pressing for more clemency and commutations of life sentences, and becoming a vocal critic of then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who faced pressure to increase his votes for commutations. During his first unsuccessful Senate run in 2016, and since he took office in 2023, Fetterman has supported traditional Democratic positions in a number of areas, including stronger gun legislation, protection of abortion rights, pro-labor policy and marijuana legalization. He has called on President Donald Trump to reverse course on policies targeting transgender Americans, particularly a ban on transgender military servicemembers that’s being challenged in court. The senator has also pushed against the administration’s efforts to undercut union support, and described the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts as chaotic. But he’s also faced criticism from those who think congressional Democrats should do more to protect federal workers and blunt the White House’s expansive cuts to federal spending and grants.

As he has been in the past, Fetterman remains quick to criticise his own party. In 2024 he called for former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s resignation or expulsion amid a corruption scandal. He mocked progressives’ response to Trump’s joint address to Congress in March, characterizing it as lousy political messaging — “a sad cavalcade of self owns and unhinged petulance.” He was the lone Democrat to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before the president took office, the lone Democrat voting to confirm Pam Bondi as attorney general, and in March he was the first Democrat to say he wouldn’t vote for a government shutdown, eventually joining nine others who advanced a Republican-led spending package House Democrats had rejected. “I’m the senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said before the Trump meeting. “No one is my gatekeeper."