Lamb tries leading Fetterman to pasture
By Richard Robbins
Conor Lamb is back. The former Allegheny County congressman who lost a Democratic Senate primary to John Fetterman in 2022 is speaking at political venues across the state, broadcasting on Substack, jotting regularly on X, and showing up on national television.
Young, slender, telegenic, and articulate, Lamb was the future of the Democratic party in the state, until he stumbled badly against Fetterman, collecting 29% of the primary vote against 59% for Fetterman.
When he campaigned in a special election for the House in April 2018, he did just about everything right, including positioning himself as a centrist. The race drew national attention. President Trump, Vice President Pence, and first son Donald Jr. entered the contest, adding national spice to the contest.
Despite being outspent two to one, Lamb beat Republican Rick Saccone. Lamb subsequently defeated incumbent House Republican Keith Rothfus in a redrawn congressional district before besting Sean Parnell in 2020.
Lamb never gained political traction against Fetterman, who had emerged from Braddock city hall to become the state’s lieutenant governor in Tom Wolf’s second term.
Unconventional in look and conduct, Fetterman was the Democrats’ flavor of the month: a successful rust-belt mayor and an outspoken champion of both cannabis and gay rights. He was embraced for his perceived ability to corral blue-collar voters turned off by Democratic elitism.
Unabashedly progressive, Fetterman was viewed as the perfect antidote to the decidedly unprogressive Donald Trump.
The fact that Fetterman has played footsie with Trump has not gone down well with great numbers of Democrats. In fact, it seems to have permanently soured many in the party against the senator.
Lamb, whose political instincts remain acute, is speaking out against Fetterman. In a recent podcast with the liberal Center for American Progress, Lamb censured Fetterman’s quiescence in the face of Trump’s assault on the Constitution and other matters.
The senator “increasingly takes Trump’s side” of things, Lamb said.
Fetterman is incapable or uninterested in mounting an effort to check Trump, Lamb argued. That would take hours of hard, sustained work. “I don’t think people realize how lazy he is,” Lamb said, speaking of Fetterman, who has had health problems.
Asked recently by CNN’s Manu Raju about Trump’s “shattering any norms of American democracy,” Fetterman said the president was “definitely different, but that’s what America voted for…. I don’t agree with many of these things, but that doesn’t make him an autocrat.”
“You could make a long list of which norms of democracy a more attentive senator might have addressed,” Lamb wrote on September 18, calling Fetterman’s response to CNN “stunning” and “unacceptable and sad.”
“What’s worse is how [Fetterman] suggests that democracy means once a president is elected, they can do what they want. That just isn’t true…. If Trump has convinced one of the most famous Democratic politicians … to give him a free rein … it’s a sure sign that we’re in bad shape.”
Lamb’s criticism includes Fetterman’s position on a possible government shutdown, as Congress and the administration race toward a funding authorization deadline at midnight Tuesday.
A shutdown “is absolutely the wrong thing,” Fetterman says.
Lamb recently wrote on X that the White House “loves Fetterman blaming [Senate minority leader] Schumer instead of Trump. Of course that … makes no sense… Schumer is actively trying to negotiate. Trump is refusing to.”
Lamb cites a projected 82% increase in Obamacare health insurance premiums in the state under the Trump budget. “No need for a shutdown,” Lamb says, “just give people back their health care.”
While Lamb has not said if he plans to run against Fetterman in 2028, he is certainly laying the groundwork. For one thing, he’s building political goodwill by tending to the many needs of the Democratic party. This includes touting the prospects of Pennsylvania Democrats running for the House in 2026, and even plugging the party’s candidate for Bucks County sheriff.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.