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John Karl Fetterman ( FEH-tər-mən; born August 15, 1969) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Pennsylvania since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, from 2006 to 2019 and as the 34th lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania from 2019 to 2023. Although he has since renounced the label, Fetterman was once described as a progressive and advocates healthcare as a right, criminal justice reform, abolishing capital punishment, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, and legalizing cannabis. Fetterman studied finance at Albright College and earned an MBA from the University of Connecticut before beginning a professional career in the insurance industry. He went on to join AmeriCorps and earned a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University. Fetterman's service with AmeriCorps led him to Braddock, where he moved in 2004 and was elected mayor the following year. As mayor, Fetterman sought to revitalize the former steel town through art and youth programs. Fetterman ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016, finishing third in the Democratic primary. He ran for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2018, defeating a field of candidates that included incumbent Mike Stack in the Democratic primary and winning the election with incumbent governor Tom Wolf. During his tenure, Fetterman received national attention for his efforts to legalize cannabis statewide and opposition to President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania. In 2021, Fetterman announced his candidacy in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania. He won the Democratic nomination with 59% of the vote and defeated Republican nominee Mehmet Oz in the general election. Fetterman resigned as lieutenant governor upon being sworn into the Senate on January 3, 2023. Early life and education Fetterman was born at Reading Hospital in West Reading, Pennsylvania, to Karl and Susan Fetterman, both of whom were 19 years old. Eventually they moved to York, Pennsylvania, where Fetterman grew up and his father became a partner at an insurance firm. He grew up in an affluent suburb of York, and his parents were conservative Republicans. Fetterman had a self-described privileged upbringing; he said he "sleepwalked" as a young adult while playing four years of football in college, intending eventually to take over ownership of his father's business. In 1991, Fetterman graduated from Albright College, also his father's alma mater, with a bachelor's in finance. He also received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Connecticut (UConn) in 1993. For two years Fetterman worked in Pittsburgh as a risk-management underwriter for Chubb. While Fetterman was studying at UConn, his best friend died in a car accident; this impacted Fetterman's life and career. After his friend's death, Fetterman joined Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, pairing with an eight-year-old boy in New Haven, Connecticut, whose father had died from AIDS and whose mother was slowly dying from the disease. During his time as a Big Brother, Fetterman says he became "preoccupied with the concept of the random lottery of birth", and promised the boy's mother he would continue to look out for her son after she was gone. In 1995, Fetterman joined the recently founded AmeriCorps, and was sent to teach Pittsburgh students pursuing their GEDs. He later attended Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, graduating in 1999 with a Master of Public Policy degree. Fetterman began his corporate career working at an insurance firm. He came to Braddock in 2001 to start an Out-of-School-Youth Program, helping local youth to earn their GEDs. He moved to Braddock in 2004. Mayor of Braddock (2006–2019) Elections Fetterman ran for mayor of Braddock against the incumbent, Pauline Abdullah, in 2005. With backing from the town's young residents, he won the Democratic primary by a single vote. Fetterman won the general election; he did not face a Republican opponent. In the 2009 Democratic primary for mayor of Braddock, Fetterman faced Jayme Cox. During the campaign, Cox attacked him for failing to build consensus with the town council. Cox also criticized Fetterman for abuse of power after Fetterman released non-public records that showed Cox was arrested in 2004. Braddock Solicitor Lawrence Shields agreed that Fetterman's conduct constituted "an abuse of his mayoral authority" and violated the Pennsylvania Criminal History Record Information Act. Fetterman defeated Cox in the primary by a vote of 294 to 103 and was unopposed in the general election. Fetterman handily won the Democratic primaries in 2013 and 2017, and was unopposed in the general elections. Tenure Fetterman served as the part-time mayor of Braddock and the full-time director of the city's youth program. He also founded a nonprofit organization, Braddock Redux, which he used to acquire and save properties in Braddock. Fetterman's father helped subsidize Fetterman financially because the position of mayor paid only $150 per month. He received payments of $54,000 from his father in 2015. Fetterman has several tattoos related to the Braddock community. On his left arm are the numbers 15104—Braddock's ZIP Code—and on the right are the dates of nine murders that occurred in the town while he was mayor. After his first election, one of Fetterman's first acts was to set up a website for Braddock showing the town's mostly neglected and destroyed buildings. As mayor, Fetterman initiated youth and art programs and worked to develop the town's abandoned buildings and improve the poor economy. With family money, he purchased the town's First Presbyterian Church for $50,000 and lived in its basement for several months. The church was later turned into the town's community center. Fetterman later purchased an adjacent warehouse for $2,000, placed two shipping containers on the roof for extra living space, and moved in. He worked to convert vacant lots into parks and gardens, build the town's first public basketball court, and establish a two-acre organic urban farm, worked by teenagers of the Braddock Youth Project. To help fund programs, Fetterman established relationships with local nonprofit organizations, Allegheny County's economic development program, and then-county executive Dan Onorato. For example, Fetterman helped secure a $400,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation toward the building of a green roof, which provided 100 summer construction jobs for local youth. Fetterman pitched Braddock to people around the country as a place to move due to the town's low real estate prices. The town has attracted people from cities such as Chicago and Portland, Oregon, drawn by the potential for growth. Inspired by Fetterman's call, a group of Brooklyn residents moved to Braddock and transformed an abandoned church into an art center. But Braddock's redevelopment raised concerns about .... Discover the John Karl popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John Karl books.