Fetterman’s Opponents Go on Attack in Pennsylvania Senate Debate
Fetterman’s Opponents Go on Attack in Pennsylvania Senate Debate
(Bloomberg) -- Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman’s opponents in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate used a debate Thursday night to criticize his proposal for a gas tax holiday, his plans for a billionaires tax and a 2013 episode in which he confronted a Black jogger with a shotgun.
It was the second debate among the Democratic candidates, and the first in which the front-runner, Fetterman, participated. So U.S. Representative Conor Lamb, State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta took turns attacking the lieutenant governor on fracking, health care and taxes.
Lamb and Kenyatta both criticized Fetterman’s proposal to suspend the 18-cent federal gas tax.
“It’s very tempting to want to tell people that we could bring the price down for them,” Lamb said, but there would be no obligation for companies to pass that savings to consumers. And it would cost the Highway Trust Fund about $20 billion. “At the same time as we’re trying to rebuild a bridge that collapsed in Pittsburgh, you’d be losing money and losing those jobs,” Lamb said.
They also mocked Fetterman’s inability to provide specifics on his proposal for a tax on billionaires. “You know it when you see it,” Fetterman said, suggesting that “if you can afford a super yacht” you should pay more in taxes. He later put the number at a nine-digit income.
“I wish I could write a bill that says ‘You know it when you see it,’” Kenyatta said.
But the most tense moment of the hour came when Fetterman failed to apologize for the 2013 gun incident, in which he said he heard gunfire and confronted a man coming from the direction of the shots. Fetterman was then mayor of the small Allegheny County town of Braddock.
Fetterman said it was a “split-second decision,” and would not say if he would have handled the situation any differently, though he added that it was “important to acknowledge the harm based on overpolicing and profiling in the Black community.”
Lamb called the episode “disqualifying,” and suggested that Fetterman was lying when he said he never pointed a shotgun at the jogger.
Kenyatta said that for someone who cultivates an image as a tough guy, Fetterman is “afraid of two little words: ‘I’m sorry.’”
“I think John has gotten away with this for too long, that as long as he didn’t know the jogger was Black, it was fine what he did,” said Kenyatta, who is Black. “John, we get it. You have a Black friend.”
Fetterman has said he didn’t know the man’s race at first.
The May 17 Democratic primary will decide the party’s nominee to succeed Republican Pat Toomey, who is retiring. Former Bridgewater Associates Chief Executive Officer David McCormick and television doctor Mehmet Oz are the leading candidates in the Republican primary.
The outcome in November could help decide control of the Senate, which is now evenly split with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.
Fetterman, the only candidate who has run statewide, leads the Democratic field with 33% in an Emerson College poll last month. Lamb had 10% support and Kenyatta 8%. A fourth candidate, Philadelphia physician Kevin Baumlin, withdrew from the race after polling at 9%, and 37% are undecided. The poll had a 4.5-point margin of error.
The debate in Harrisburg was sponsored by the Nexstar Media Group, which owns five television stations in the state.
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