Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) launched his 2022 Senate campaign to fill outgoing Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-PA) seat on Monday morning.
Fetterman announced his candidacy in a video that highlighted his experience as the former mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania and positing himself as the answer to voters from small towns who went for ex-President Donald Trump.
“These places across Pennsylvania feel left behind. They don’t feel part of the conversation,” he says in the video. “That’s why Donald Trump went to these small counties and held these big rallies.”
In a series of tweets that followed the video, the lieutenant governor also promised to “always be 100% sedition-free,” an apparent reference to Trump’s incitement of the violent siege of the Capitol last month-and the fact that several Republican lawmakers enabled the ex-President to do so.
“If you send me to the US Senate, I will always be 100% Sedition-Free,” Fetterman tweeted. “We as a nation crossed lines I never thought we would-or even could. My pledge to you: to hold core ideals like democracy + the peaceful transfer of power sacred, always.”
“Not even a little light sedition?” a Twitter user responded in an apparent reference to the TV show “Arrested Development.”
“There’s enough sedition-curious members already,” Fetterman replied.
The lieutenant governor made his first move toward running for the Senate on Friday, when he filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.
Fetterman was at the center of Pennsylvania Republicans’ efforts to follow Trump’s lead in trying to undo the elections last month when they barred the lieutenant governor from presiding over a new session while they tried to prevent a newly-elected Democratic state senator from being sworn in.
