John Fetterman, the man behind the hoodie

John Fetterman is considered a champion of the people who loves bucking Pennsylvania’s political traditions, especially if it means he can stay comfortable in his trademark shorts and hoodie. But who is the man behind the sweater?

Born in West Reading Pennsylvania and raised in York, John was the son of teenage parents, Karl and Susan Fetterman, who were both nineteen years old at the time of John’s birth. 

John grew up in the affluent suburb of York and both of his parents were staunch conservatives and members of the Republican Party. 

John’s father was a successful partner and part owner at a local insurance firm and this position allowed John to live what he described as a privileged upbringing, saying in a 2015 interview with PennLive that he "sleepwalked" through most of his early adulthood. 

"Through no hard work of my own, no due diligence or anything like that, I was born into a family that afforded me food, shelter, love, stability, acceptance, college and graduate school," John once said in a 2015 interview with Patriot-News.

Success came early for John according to the Philidelphia Inquirer, and in 1991 he graduated from Albright college with a degree in finance followed up his undergraduate with a Master of Business Administration from the University of Connecticut (UConn). 

During his time at UConn, John’s life took a profound turn when one of his closest friends died in a car accident. The incident prompted John to volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. 

John was paired with a young boy whose father had died of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDs) and whose mother would soon succumb to the same disease. It was this experience that led John to become preoccupied with the idea of the “random lottery of birth,” a phrase he often used when interviewed about his Senate run. 

"I made the choice at that point in '95 that I didn't want to spend the rest of my professional career just making my own circumstances even better than they were," John said in an interview with PennLive in 2015.

While John worked briefly for a time as a Risk Management Writer at Chubb & Son, he left the job to pursue a master's degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. 

From Harvard, John went directly into working with poor and working-class individuals. He created a small GED program in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and two years later bought a church with his family’s money in an effort to transform the crumbling rust belt town. 

John’s political career began in 2005 when he served as part-time mayor of Braddock, earning just $150 per month, a position his father subsidized by paying John $54,000 a year so that he could continue to improve life for the citizens of Braddock. 

Braddock saw John hold three terms as mayor, under which he had a contentious relationship with the town's council. But he did a lot to redevelop Braddock and turned it into a more safe and more welcoming environment.

During his time as mayor of Braddock, John met and later married Brazilian-American activist Gisele Barreto Almeida after she wrote him a letter about the town’s role in the steel industry. The pair would have three children together over the years as John continued his political rise. 

In January 2013, John was criticized by the public for pulling a shotgun on an unarmed black jogger when he responded to what he thought were gunshots. 

"I believe I did the right thing,” John said in an interview with Pittsburgh's WTAE-TV in 2013, “but I may have broken the law during the course of it."

The shotgun incident did little to hurt John’s popularity, and in 2016 he announced that he would run for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate held by Pat Toomey. 

Running on support for gay marriage as well as helping working-class and minority communities in Pennsylvania, John’s campaign closely resembled that of then-presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders but it ultimately ended when he lost in the Democratic primary to Katie McGuinty. 

John then tried his luck at running for Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor’s office and was elected in 2019 and used his power to make a national name for himself. 

In 2022, John announced that he was planning to run again for Pat Toomey’s Senate seat after Toomey revealed he was retiring from the position. 

During his campaign for Senate, John would suffer a number of major setbacks, including suffering an ischemic stroke that left him unable to speak properly.

Yet despite his difficulty speaking and health condition, John won his bid for Senate, beating his Republican opponent Mehmet Oz with 51% of the vote, all while wearing his trademark black hoodie.