LEBANON, Pennsylvania—By the numbers, this is “Trump Country.” The residents of Lebanon County voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden by almost 32 points in 2020.
But on the last Saturday of April, a home tucked in the suburbs of Lebanon (pronounced as “Leb-a-nin” by locals) was not only awash in blue, it was overflowing—thanks to a visit from Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.
High turnout to the meet-and-greet at the sizable home caused the crowd to pour onto the lawn as the line for the sign-in sheet wrapped around the house. Attendees were draped in Fetterman campaign gear; others wore shirts supporting marijuana legalization, a key issue for the Senate candidate.
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“Some people are like, ‘Why are you going to Lebanon County? It’s so red?’” Fetterman said to supporters on the lawn, as his wife, Gisele, who had fans of her own, stood nearby. “And I’m like, ‘That’s exactly why we’re going to Lebanon. Because it’s so red.’”
Fetterman’s central philosophy in this year’s Senate race has been, “Every County. Every vote.” Now, with the primary just a week away, Fetterman appears to be looking past that fight and on to the main event.
And he has good reason.
Fetterman has dominated virtually every poll in recent weeks, eclipsing his closest rivals, Rep. Conor Lamb and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, by double digits. He’s amassed a war chest of campaign funds, with $1.86 million cash on hand in his most recent finance report. He’s already launched ads throughout the state and made campaign stops in districts where Democrats historically never set foot.
Jo Roussey, a voter in Lebanon, told The Daily Beast she looked at Lamb and Kenyatta, calling them “two good men,” but settled on Fetterman.
“But John, I think with me, coming to every county is expressing how important every individual vote is,” she said.
In speaking to the crowd, Fetterman seemed to recognize his command over the primary field. “If we do win the primary—and things look good—then we will carry your flag with us into the general election,” he said.
And in recent weeks, he’s generally strayed away from name-checking his fellow contenders in the Democratic primary, instead training his fire at potential Republican opponents.
In the first two Democratic debates, he didn’t shy away from taking hits at Dave McCormick, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who’s considered a leading contender for the Republican nomination.
Over the past month, he’s started notably name-checking McCormick and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz on social media, particularly following Trump’s endorsement of Oz for the seat. His campaign has been running Facebook ads against Oz and McCormick, asking for small-dollar donations. At his Lebanon County stop—and at a stop in another red area, Wilkes-Barre Township, later in the day—he repeated the same joke: “I never thought I would be able to run in the statewide race for Senate and be able to brag, ‘I live in Pennsylvania.’”
Both McCormick and Oz have faced backlash for moving to the state shortly before announcing their bids for the seat.
Republicans, meanwhile, are mostly busy attacking each other, with Oz, McCormick and a handful of lower-polling candidates going head-to-head for the seat. But once both parties have secured their nominees, the GOP is expected to mount massive attacks against Fetterman, should he win the nomination. But some predicted his party would bring more headaches than the candidate himself.
“There’s no evidence that John Fetterman enters this race with particularly significant baggage, or not with an unusual amount of baggage,” said J.J. Balaban, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist.
“The heaviest baggage is probably from the party, not the person, in this situation.”
Nationally, sentiment for Democrats has reached dangerous lows. Inflation is soaring, the COVID pandemic is ongoing, and even the party’s most basic legislative priorities like raising the minimum wage have died in the Senate. Biden’s approval rating is about 41.9 percent, according to a FiveThirtyEight average of recent polling.
Still, Fetterman hasn’t attempted to distance himself from the president. He appeared at a recent visit Biden made to the state and at a primary debate last month, he gave Biden a B+ letter grade for his first year in office.
That’s likely because in a state where Democrats need every vote they can get, party sentiment matters. Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.
But at his Lebanon stop, Fetterman also acknowledged the grim prospects for his party this year.
“Trust me, it's going to be tough,” he told the crowd.
Outside spending is also expected to play a major role in the race, with national campaign arms like the Democratic and Republican Senate Campaign Committees and the national party committees holding major stakes in the outcome.
But with everything on the line, Fetterman still isn’t afraid to turn a certain brand of Democrat away.
In Lebanon, he asked if there were any “Joe Manchin Democrats,” in the crowd, referring to the most moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia. One person raised a hand, to which Fetterman responded, “I might let you down… Democrats in this kind of environment, in this kind of cycle, need to come together and vote like Democrats.” Asked about balancing the need to win every vote with the idea of potentially disappointing moderate Democrats or independents, Fetterman told The Daily Beast that the one “Joe Manchin Democrat” in Lebanon was the first he’d encountered on the campaign trail, and pointed to polling showing him performing well among moderate Democratic voters. When he’d asked the same question in Wilkes-Barre later in the day, there were indeed no “Joe Manchin Democrats” around.
“We know that Democrats as a whole want somebody that will behave differently than Joe Manchin. And that’s a fact,” Fetterman said. “And investing in the middle class, whether it’s Build Back Better, whether it’s raising our minimum wage, whether that is passing the Pro Act.”
Fetterman is also betting that his strategy of focusing on the rural wings of Pennsylvania will pay dividends come November. Balaban noted that with his extensive campaign resources, Fetterman should be able to keep up the capacity of hitting rural areas while still pushing for turnout in the urban areas ahead of November, and that doing so could help “stop the bleeding.”
“It makes a big difference to lose these places 70-30 as opposed to, say, 60-40,” he said.
Fetterman offered a similar assessment to Lebanon voters. “Does your vote count different because you're in Lebanon than anywhere else?” he said, as a man from the crowd loudly shouted, “No.”
“So if you’re out knocking doors, if you’re out losing friends, if you’re out holding the line in some of these counties, I better be there. I will be there,” Fetterman added. “And I’m always going to be there because [we’re] going to need every vote in this election. That’s the truth.”
