John Fetterman Wins Pennsylvania Senate Race

Since Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in the 2020 presidential election, effectively securing his victory, Republican Pat Toomey‘s retirement was seen as the Democrats best opportunity for a pickup. Early Wednesday morning, NBC News and CNN projected Democrat John Fetterman the winner in Pennsylvania, defeating Republican Mehmet Oz giving his party Democrats a better chance of maintaining the majority in the upper chamber. 

“It’s official. I will be the next U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania,” Fetterman tweeted just before 1 a.m. “We bet on the people of Pennsylvania—and you didn’t let us down  And I won’t let you down.” He later told supporters, “This campaign has always been about fighting for everyone who has ever been knocked down, that got back up.”

The matchup was closely followed from the jump. On one side of the race was Fetterman, a towering, tattooed man whose low-key presentation style became such a signature on the campaign trail that a picture of him wearing a suit and tie with Joe Biden sent the Twittersphere into a tizzy. On the other side was Oz, a coiffed celebrity doctor who might very well spend more time in his palatial New Jersey estate than Pennsylvania.

Throughout the race, Oz sought to paint his opponent as a soft-on crime progressive in the vein of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Fetterman, meanwhile, cast Dr. Oz as a carpetbagger with extreme views on abortion, and frequently tying him to Donald Trump. Oz trailed Fetterman in the polls since the two won their respective primaries. But as Fetterman faced questions about his fitness for office after he suffered a near-fatal stroke in mid-May, the Republican Senate hopeful narrowed the gap in the final weeks before Election Day. 

Historically, pundits have considered Pennsylvania a microcosm of the national political landscape. When the state flipped from Trump, who won the commonwealth in 2016, to Biden in 2020, it was cemented as one of the few remaining battlegrounds in the country. 

In another Pennsylvania contest a featuring Trump-backed candidate, Democrat Josh Shapiro beat far-right Republican Doug Mastriano to become the state’s next governor.