Pa. Senate debate focuses on John Fetterman, who sits out the opener

ALLENTOWN — The empty podium at stage right took a lot of hits on Sunday. From the opening moments of Pennsylvania’s first Democratic Senate debate, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb and State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta lobbed attacks at their missing primary opponent: the front-runner, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

In 90 minutes of jabs and jokes, both men — especially Lamb — argued that Fetterman’s decision to skip the debate was an insult to voters and a red flag for his candidacy in a critical Senate contest. “He didn’t respect you enough to show up today,” Lamb told a crowd of about 175 people at Muhlenberg College.

And Lamb immediately brought up a 2013 incident that has loomed over Fetterman’s campaign, in which Fetterman pulled a shotgun on a Black jogger who he had wrongly suspected of a shooting. “It was wrong when he did that,” Lamb said in his opening remarks, after telegraphing the attack in the days before. “And he skipped the debate today because he doesn’t think he has to answer. Given everything that’s gone on in this country, that is fatal to his campaign. You deserve a senator that you can trust to show up and not to act like a loose cannon.”

Kenyatta, the only Black candidate in the primary, also went after Fetterman for the jogger incident — specifically his unwillingness to apologize. “John had nine years to not just apologize for taking an illegally loaded shotgun, chasing down the first person he saw but to understand why that was so dangerous,” Kenyatta said. “To understand how that situation could have gone a completely different way.”

https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2022/04/pa-senate-debate-focuses-on-john-fetterman-who-sits-out-the-opener.html