--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram here with Katie Meyer, a reporter at Spotlight PA, who's been covering John Fetterman's campaign against Dr. Oz.
--:-- Katie Meyer: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Democrats are pinning their hopes to hold on to the Senate on a big ol' boy from Pennsylvania. Not my words. Elect that big ol' boy to be governor. Uh, no sir, he's running for senator. But you're right, he is big. People have been trying to label me my entire life. I do not look like a typical politician. I don't even look like a typical person. And this Pennsylvania Senate race is kinda wild. Heart surgeon versus stroke. Crudité versus Carhartt. New Jersey versus Braddock. Dr. Oz versus John Fetterman. How Pennsylvania's big old boy could upend progressive American politics.
--:-- Katie Meyer: That's right. And I think that's part of what's so interesting about this race. Fetterman is a populist candidate who's trying to appeal to working-class voters in Pennsylvania. And he's been pretty successful so far.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's talk about Fetterman's origin story. Where does he come from? He's originally from York, Pennsylvania, which is like South Central Pennsylvania. He grew up pretty upper middle class. He actually went to grad school at Harvard. He went to Harvard. Yes. So, yeah, not to bury that lead. He went to Harvard. He's like, you know, he's this biker bar looking guy, but he has a graduate degree from Harvard. Is he like kind of like bizarro world Pete Buttigieg, someone who like always knew they wanted to be president one day? But instead of being like, I don't know, this nebbish dude who plays piano and speaks 17 languages, he's like this hulking cargo shorts, tatted up dude who looks real working class.
--:-- Katie Meyer: That's a great way to put it. And I think that's part of what's so appealing about Fetterman. He's a guy who doesn't look like a typical politician, and he's not afraid to be himself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Part of what he has always said about why he got into politics is that a very good friend of his died in a car accident. He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life at that point. And he ended up joining AmeriCorps, trying to get into some public service stuff. That's when he went back and he got the grad degree from Harvard. And then he moved to Braddock, Pennsylvania to work in a GED program. The collapse of the U.S. steel industry left this borough in the shadow of Pittsburgh in ruins. Trains don't stop here anymore. Storefronts are shuttered. Homes crumbling. And very shortly after getting to Braddock in like the mid-aughts, he ran for mayor and he won by one vote. He won it by one vote. And then he spent more than a decade as the mayor of Braddock.
--:-- Katie Meyer: That's right. And during his time as mayor, Fetterman became known for his efforts to revitalize the town and bring in new businesses. He was also very involved in anti-violence initiatives and worked to improve the town's infrastructure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eventually, he graduates to lieutenant governor of the state of Pennsylvania. And obviously, that's a much bigger platform. What is his suite of policies? Yeah, so a couple of big ones, you know, as lieutenant governor, he's chaired the pardons board and has been very anti-mass incarceration, wants to make sure people who were incarcerated a long time ago have opportunities. The most common touchstone that I use to describe to people that have never experienced it is like well have you seen the Shawshank Redemption And almost everybody has And I like well most of these people are like Morgan Freeman character It's like, if you think Morgan Freeman's character should have died in prison at the end of the movie, then I got nothing for you.
--:-- Katie Meyer: That's right. And Fetterman has also been a big proponent of organized labor and has advocated for the passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act in the Senate. He's also been a strong supporter of gun reform and has called for a red flag law and universal background checks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But also, he says he grew up with guns. You know, he's not anti-gun. He understands the value of having guns. As a gun owner myself and an overwhelming supermajority of gun owners want responsible gun ownership. Also really wants to make it clear that he doesn't want to defund the police. He also, over the course of his career, he's kind of gotten more nuanced on fracking, on energy issues. He doesn't support a moratorium on fracking, which a lot of progressives in Pennsylvania do.
--:-- Katie Meyer: That's right. And I think that's part of what's so interesting about Fetterman's campaign. He's not afraid to take on tough issues and challenge the status quo.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And where does that put him in like the spectrum of Democratic platforms in the party? Yeah, I think the way I like to look at it is like Democrats right now, because these parties are so divided, Republicans generally vote for Republicans, Democrats generally vote for Democrats. But then the additional voters, those kind of X factor voters who determine the outcome of an election, they're a little different for Fetterman than they are for many Democrats.
--:-- Katie Meyer: That's right. And I think that's part of what's so appealing about Fetterman. He's a candidate who can appeal to a broad range of voters and bring people together.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's talk about the race. How does that position him against, let me check my notes here, Dr. Oz. Pennsylvania needs a conservative who will put America first, one who can reignite our divine spark, bravely fight for freedom and tell it like it is. Oh, yeah. So this it's a weird race. It's a really weird race. I haven't seen anything really like it. So it's kind of hard to even analyze like how this is going. One of the strange things about it, other than just like you've got, you know, the big old boy and then TV doctor, Mehmet Oz is that not much of the campaign has been run in person. Fetterman, you know, he led his primary from the beginning. I'll just say that he was pretty out front. He won every single county in the primary. Oz had a brutal primary. He barely got it. It took weeks to get the results because it was so close.
--:-- Katie Meyer: And then in the last days of the primary, Fetterman had a massive stroke. John Fetterman, the now Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate is celebrating, but also recovering in the hospital tonight after suffering a stroke on Friday and being implanted with a pacemaker today. And he was out of commission for months. Basically, all summer he's been off the campaign trail. He's had some aphasia. He's had some issues speaking, although his campaign says it's getting better.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's he doing online? What's the ground game on Twitter.com? The ground game on Twitter.com has mostly just been like aimed at making Dr. Oz look stupid. Just dunking on him as much as he can. Like when he goes to the grocery store for what was it again? It was a crudités. Yeah. Crudités. That's right. Yeah. And for anyone who somehow hasn't seen it, Dr. Oz did this video actually ages ago. And then Fetterman kind of brought it back where he was talking about grocery store prices. He was at a Redner's grocery store, but he like mixed it up with Wegmans and he called it Wegner's.
--:-- Katie Meyer: Yeah, that was a big moment in the campaign. Fetterman kind of latched onto the idea that he called it crudite, not a veggie tray, which is what many, many working Pennsylvanians would call it, according to Fetterman.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's also been making fun of Dr. Oz being from New Jersey. He paid Snooki from the TV show The Jersey Shore to make a video for Oz. I heard that you moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to look for a new job. And personally, I don't know why anyone would want to leave Jersey because it's like the best place ever. And we're all hot messes. But I want to say best of luck to you.
--:-- Katie Meyer: Yeah, that was a big moment in the campaign. Fetterman's campaign has been focused on making Dr. Oz look out of touch with Pennsylvania voters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How's Dr. Oz hitting back, if at all? So, yeah, I think initially, you know, him and his team maybe weren't completely ready to deal with this kind of unusual, very social media focused campaign. But what's now they've kind of changed their tone and what they've settled on, I think, is two things, two main lines of attack. First, you know, they're saying Fetterman is too sick from his stroke to be in the Senate. Oz's campaign releasing a statement Tuesday that said if John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn't have had a major stroke.
--:-- Katie Meyer: Yeah, that's been a big part of Dr. Oz's campaign. He's been trying to make Fetterman's health issues a liability.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then also Oz is really like he's been hammering Fetterman with ads. And this is not unique to Pennsylvania. We've seen this in a lot of other states, but hammering him with ads claiming that he's soft on crime. John Fetterman wants to release convicted murderers from prison. We all know Fetterman loves free stuff, but we can't let him free murderers.
--:-- Katie Meyer: Yeah, that's been a big part of Dr. Oz's campaign. He's been trying to make Fetterman look like a radical.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And also I should say here, you know, Oz and Fetterman, they have not debated yet. They really haven't appeared together, but they do now have a debate on the calendar. That's October 25th.
--:-- Katie Meyer: Yeah, that's a big moment in the campaign. The debate could be a turning point in the race.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How big a deal do you think it would be if Fetterman could defeat Dr. Oz, win a Senate seat and help the Democrats potentially keep the Senate? It would be significant I think if Fetterman were to win because he the kind of candidate that Democrats haven run very frequently And Pennsylvania just always is worth paying attention to because it really mirrors the country as a whole And so I would say a Fetterman win, what that would show is twofold. First of all, his image is really different than most Democrats. He really does have this populist appeal. He's a guy who tells it like it is, that he's not very stage managed. that there's an idea that he's speaking from the heart. And if he wins, I think it shows that people really want that and resonate with that.
--:-- Katie Meyer: Yeah, that's a big part of Fetterman's appeal. He's a candidate who can connect with voters on a personal level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then Fetterman policy-wise, I think this is even more important, he's been able to get away from this thing that the Democrats have felt kind of compelled to do, which is split the difference politically. He's been pretty uncompromising on issues he cares about. Again, labor, prison reform, legalizing recreational marijuana. There's really been no gray area in what he thinks on that stuff. And if he wins, I think on issues like that, it shows Democrats what's possible. And it might provide a blueprint for capturing a coalition they have trouble with. Working class white voters who kind of left the party or started to leave the party under the Trump administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was Katie Meyer with Spotlight PA. It's a not-for-profit investigative newsroom. You can find her work at spotlightpa.org. How much that stroke might slow down John Fetterman, around the corner on Today Explained.
--:-- Miles Bryan: I'm Miles Bryan, Today Explained's Philadelphia Bureau Chief. I went to Scranton to see how Fetterman's campaign was going.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Scranton has sort of an outsized rep for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is still probably because it's the setting of The Office.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yeah, it's actually it's very popular. It's on Netflix. You should check it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But politically, the Scranton area is known for being a bellwether. Northeast Pennsylvania was a Democratic stronghold for decades. It's where Joe Biden was born.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Right. But Trump and Republicans made big inroads there in 2016 and to a lesser extent in 2020.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Fetterman's campaign slogan is every county, every vote. You know, like we just heard from Katie, he's really making a play to reach voters that other Democrats haven't or haven't in years.
--:-- Miles Bryan: That's right. And I wanted to see that in action. OK. And I also wanted to see just how much his stroke was affecting him and how that was landing with potential voters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I want to hear about that. Tell us what you saw when you got to Scranton.
--:-- Miles Bryan: So it was held in a big sports arena in Scranton. About a thousand people showed up. You get inside and the soundtrack was extremely boomer political event. You know, a lot of Tom Petty bangers. It starts with speeches from a couple of other Pennsylvania politicians. Then Fetterman's wife, Giselle, takes the stage.
--:-- Giselle Fetterman: For those of you who don't know me, I'm Giselle Bahiafou Fetterman, a proud advocate, a former Dreamer and the Second Lady of Pennsylvania, or I like to be known as Slop. Slop. Everyone is always afraid to call me that. They think they're going to offend me, but I love it. It's so funny.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Giselle is a big part of Fetterman's political brand. She's extremely popular. You know, I talked to people who said they came out to see her just as much as they came out to see her husband.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so once Slop got done talking, what did Fetterman have to say?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Well, he takes the stage in his signature black hoodie. Lots of applause. Wow, Scranton, Scranton. He sounds a little out of breath.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can we hear this loud enough so you know who? can see that in New Jersey. That's sort of Fetterman's go-to joke on the trail.
--:-- Miles Bryan: But as you could hear in that audio, he's not getting it out quite as smoothly as he would like. And, you know, Katie told us that Fetterman's been recovering from a pretty serious stroke for a few months, and his campaign says he's doing really well. And the sort of auditory processing issues he's having don't indicate any problems with his cognition or thinking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did the audience notice that he was off his game?
--:-- Miles Bryan: You know, I was looking around and most people seemed totally unfazed. And then there was this moment in the speech where Fetterman addressed the effects of his stroke head on.
--:-- Fetterman: Let me ask you a very serious question, though. How many one of you in your own life have had a serious health challenge. Hands. Personally, any of you? A lot of hands go up. How many of your parents, maybe? More hands. Your grandparents. Even more hands. Kids. At this point, everyone's hand is up.
--:-- Miles Bryan: I'm so sorry to know that. I certainly, I certainly know. I genuinely hope that you don't have a doctor in your life making fun of that. are telling you that you aren't fit to serve or to work at your job, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did that resonate?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yeah, it really, really did. And I heard as much so from voters. I talked to a couple of dozen people before the rally started as they waited in line, and I asked all of them what they thought of Fetterman's stroke.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's hear some of that tape.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Here's Tom Gilmore. I had a heart attack. You know, I'm still here. I'm still kicking. I think I'm pretty functional and with it. As long as as long as he's as long as he's healing and he's going to get back to 90 percent, I'll take 90 percent over Oz any day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, Tom's a Democrat, but I heard essentially the same thing from the independents and Republicans I talked to, too.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Here's Gary Thomas. He's a Trump voter who was weighing whether to vote for Fetterman or Oz in November. So what do you think of John Fetterman? I like the way he dresses because he don't act like a politician in a monkey suit. Fetterman had a stroke a couple months ago. It's been in the news a lot. What do you think about that? Does it influence your opinion? No, I had heart attacks in the past, so it don't matter. You're capable of doing it. You got a brain. Just don't let the stress get to you. and take blood thinners, like a baby aspirin, and keep it going.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I got to tell you, Sean, like a dozen other people brought up health challenges they'd had or someone in their family had had when I asked them about Fetterman's stroke.
--:-- Miles Bryan: America is a very sick country, and Fetterman's health problems seem to actually add to the image he's cultivating as a normal person.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wonder if it's just that Fetterman's established image that goes back to, you know, Braddock overpowers, any health difficulties he's had.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yeah, I think that image that he's cultivated of himself is really powerful and durable in voters' minds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, three words come to your mind when I say Fetterman. Iconoclast, outsider, and larger-than-life personality.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Salt of the earth, an ally, and tall. We think he's a down-to-earth guy. He's a Pennsylvania guy. He just seems like a down-to-earth guy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why do you like him? Down-to-earth. He's down-to-earth. He takes no crap. He says it like it is. Pennsylvania guy, down-to-earth, salt-to-the-earth.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Well said. I really like him as a person, not just for the politics. I mean, I think he could go to Washington and kick their ass. Salt-to-the-earth.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It sounds like a whole lot of people who have no idea this guy went to Harvard.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yeah, I mean, it's probably obvious at this point. But what struck me is that Fetterman's appeal is so much deeper than his policies. In fact, a lot of voters I talked to didn't bring up any of his policies. They just brought up what you heard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And to be honest, it sort of reminded me of how voters talked about Trump. You know, I covered a President Trump speech in Scranton in 2020, and I heard similar things from voters. They were excited about this earthy outsider who could physically dominate his opponents in Washington.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Here's Mike. He's one more Fetterman voter. He didn't want to give me his last name. You know, why do you like Fetterman? I think he breaks a lot of the stereotypes. I think one of the things that Republicans like to use against Democrats is that we're going to get trampled over sort of the weak, I think, stereotype comes to mind. He totally breaks that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that might not be enough to win. Fetterman has been leading in the polls for the whole race. But in the last couple of weeks, Oz has narrowed that gap. Analysts say Dr. Oz's attack ads that hammer Fetterman for being quote-unquote soft on crime are working. As of this week, the race is basically a toss-up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Miles Bryan, Philadelphia Bureau Chief at Today Explained, he thought The Office was on Netflix, but apparently it's not anymore. I guess I'll never know how good it is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our program today was edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and engineered by Afim Shapiro and Christian Ayala and Paul Robert Mounsey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The rest of the team includes Victoria Chamberlain, Halima Shah, Siona Petros, Amanda Llewellyn, Avishai Artsy, Hadi Mawagdi, and Noel King Abvi. Extra help this week from Jillian Weinberger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our audio fellow is Tori Dominguez, and our supervising producer is Amina Alsadi.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're on the radio in partnership with WNYC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're a podcast that's a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, and no podcast Monday on account of Indigenous Peoples Day, back in thine feeds Tuesday with more Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's. Fall is right around the corner, and that means layering season is too. Macy's Fall Fashion Guide can help you get a pulse on all the latest trends and must-haves.
