'We want to win': Democrats face choice in key Senate race

John Fetterman was sitting, alone, in the corridor outside the hotel ballroom where Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party committee members were gathered, looking every bit like someone who didn’t belong there. Moments later, Fetterman — Pennsylvania’s sitting lieutenant governor — got trounced by more than 2 to 1 by U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb in the endorsement vote in the party’s primary race for U.S. Senate.

Not only did Fetterman come from the party’s progressive wing, but he is irreverent, blunt and, well, something to see. At 6 feet 8, he is tattooed and goateed, his head is clean shaven, and he is most often seen wearing shorts — even in winter — and casual work shirts. Fetterman leads in campaign fundraising and is also the only one in the race to have won a statewide campaign, or even run statewide.

But the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol stiffened the resolve among Democratic state committee members to vote for the candidate who is most electable in the November general election in this presidential battleground state, some Democrats say. For many, that means voting for Lamb, viewed as a more moderate, more conventional candidate with a resume that has more crossover appeal.

“Those of us in politics who are in the know, we want to win the Senate race, so we want to pick the most electable person statewide, and I think a lot of people agree that that person is Conor Lamb,” said Christina Proctor, the Democratic Party chair in Washington County. Lamb, 37, a clean-cut former federal prosecutor and ex-Marine, worked hard for months to win the party’s endorsement, coming up just short of the required two-thirds vote threshold after months of courting state committee members. Lamb has backing from the state party’s Latino Caucus, the National Organization for Women and the vast majority of building trades unions, plus Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and Rich Fitzgerald, the chief executive of Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh.

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/03/we-want-to-win-democrats-face-choice-in-key-senate-race.html

John Fetterman (left) and Conor Lamb (right)