John Fetterman

John Fetterman appeared recently to speak to the worthies at the Pittsburgh Golf Club.

He is running for the position of Lieutenant Governor of the State of Pennsylvania. He is currently the Mayor of Braddock, Pa..

Born in York, he graduated in finance from Albright as class president and planned to go into some sales or marketing position when a good friend was killed in an auto accident. This, he says, changed his life; he became acutely aware of the fragility of life and the importance of creating meaning in one's relationship with the world.

He changed course. He got a master's degree in Public Policy from Harvard University. He moved to Braddock in 2001 to serve with AmeriCorps and start a non profit organization, Braddock Redux. There he pursued a life much like a social worker. In 2005 he ran for mayor of Braddock and won by a single vote. He has made great efforts to raise Braddock's profile through TV appearances, a Levi ad campaign. His efforts at local election has improved; he wins now with over 85% of the vote.

He has made equality, environmental protection, gay rights, immigration and marijuana legalization major campaign issues. Fetterman is a self-described democratic socialist. He ran for the United States Senate in 2016, but was defeated in the Democratic primary. During the campaign, Fetterman endorsed Sanders.

Fetterman has a shaved head, is 6'8" and weighs 350 pounds. He looks like a biker and talks like a Mercy nun. When he speaks, he sounds perfectly sincere, completely committed to the areas of the world that are incomplete and that he knows are incomplete; he just does not care. He develops city property, practices Narcan injections with his family and has an Urban Farm. On his left arm are the numbers 15104 - Braddock's zip code, and on the right, the dates of five murders that occurred in the town since he was elected mayor.

If this description seems a bit incomplete in explaining this man's popularity and his rising ambition, it is. But the good Mayor has a poorly hidden card: His wife, Gisele, an undocumented immigrant from Brazil who talks like a Mercy nun and looks like a runway model. She, too, is an intense but gentle and understanding social activist who has developed a huge charity that provides unused food to the poor.

When Fetterman left the PGC with his wife he received a standing ovation from a room of people who not only had never voted for a Democrat, they had never intentionally met one.

The First Lady of Braddock:

Her husband, his honor, the Mayor: