Sen. John Fetterman has pledged not to campaign against his Republican counterpart Dave McCormick if McCormick seeks reelection, a striking reversal from the Democrat who once branded McCormick a "Connecticut carpetbagger" and raised money to defeat him.
Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview that he considers McCormick a friend and will stay out of any future race against him. McCormick, the Republican who won Pennsylvania's other Senate seat in 2024, faces voters again in 2030.
The pledge marks a dramatic turn. In 2024, Fetterman actively raised money for Democratic incumbent Bob Casey, McCormick's opponent. He once called Casey his "mentor" and attacked McCormick as an outsider, a hedge fund manager who had spent years in Connecticut before returning to Pennsylvania to run for office. McCormick won anyway, and the two senators have since built what Fetterman calls a "Team Pennsylvania" alliance.
The friendship is not just talk. Fetterman and McCormick recently launched a joint bipartisan fundraising committee called Common Ground PA. The vehicle allows donors from either party to contribute to both senators' political operations, an arrangement almost unheard of between a Democrat and a Republican sharing a state delegation.
The two senators frequently co-sponsor legislation and sit for joint interviews emphasizing bipartisan cooperation. Fetterman has also taken to spending time in the GOP cloakroom off the Senate chamber, building relationships with Republican colleagues including Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama.
When the Washington Examiner pressed Fetterman on whether he would support or oppose McCormick in a future race, he left no room for ambiguity:
"I would absolutely never move against my friend."
He repeated the commitment moments later: "I would never, ever move against my friend." He called McCormick "a great guy." McCormick's team did not respond to a request for comment on whether the Republican would extend the same courtesy if Fetterman runs for reelection in 2028.
The Pennsylvania Democrat's cross-party positioning has reshaped his political standing in ways that would have seemed impossible when he first ran for the Senate as an avowed progressive. He has since rejected that label. The numbers show why.
Fetterman now carries a 77 percent approval rating among Pennsylvania Republicans and a 69 percent disapproval rating among Pennsylvania Democrats, the New York Post reported. Repeated polls show his favorability among Republicans in the state actually exceeds McCormick's own numbers with the GOP base.
Those numbers reflect a senator who has broken with his party on Israel, drawn what he called a "red line" on the issue, and told reporters that if Democrats drift too far left on support for the Jewish state, it would be a "much different situation" for his party membership.
Fetterman described the fundraising committee and his broader approach in terms that sounded less like a partisan and more like someone building a regional brand independent of either national party:
"I'm not about changing my party. It's just, we are Team Pennsylvania, and we work together. And it happens to be there are donors that actually like that or support that, and it doesn't mean that you're my enemy, or it doesn't mean that your views are trying to destroy our democracy."
Fetterman's willingness to cross party lines has not yet triggered a formal break with Senate Democratic leadership. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called Fetterman a "good member" of the caucus. Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, a fellow member of the Democrats' 2022 freshman class, echoed that assessment while acknowledging the tension:
"He votes with us 95% of the time, and his views are in the minority on Israel and to some extent Trump appointees, but it's a big caucus, and he's with us. There's plenty of room for John Fetterman."
But Fetterman has not limited his independence to policy votes. He has publicly mocked Abdul el Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, and criticized Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, before Platner withdrew from the race. Those moves put him at odds not just with party leadership but with the activist base that once championed his candidacy.
Fetterman has not said whether he will run for reelection when his own Senate term expires in 2028. He has also flatly rejected any suggestion that he might switch parties. "I'm not going to be a Republican," he said on NBC's Meet the Press NOW, as Breitbart noted.
The McCormick alliance is not Fetterman's only Republican friendship. He attended a memorial dinner for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina with a small group of senators and sat on a bus with the McCormick family the following day at a public ceremony honoring Graham.
Fetterman spoke warmly about Graham, describing a bond built on shared "devotion for Israel and of course Ukraine." He said he was grieving Graham's death and praised the late senator in personal terms:
"He's just such a funny guy that I thoroughly enjoyed. I mean, he checks every box: statesman, serious guy, but also super, a fun dude to hang out with."
That kind of cross-party warmth stands in sharp contrast to the direction of the broader Democratic caucus, where more than a hundred House Democrats recently voted to strip all aid to Israel, and progressive voices have pushed the party further left on foreign policy and domestic spending.
Fetterman also weighed in on the Republican side of the aisle, criticizing what he described as President Trump's willingness to primary loyal Republicans. He pointed to successful primary challenges against Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana as examples.
"Trump just liquidated perfectly great, committed Republicans. He just wasted them, ended their careers."
He added that Trump's attacks on Senate Majority Leader John Thune made the pitch for a Democrat to switch parties unconvincing: "And now he's attacking Thune. What's going to happen to, like, a Democrat? It's a pretty strange pitch."
Those comments reflect Fetterman's own calculation. He operates in a space between parties, too pro-Israel and too friendly with Republicans for the Democratic base, but unwilling to join a GOP where, as he sees it, loyalty to the president is the price of admission. As some Republican senators have warned, the Democratic Party's internal divisions are widening, and figures like Fetterman sit at the fault line.
Whether Fetterman's independent brand survives contact with a reelection campaign remains an open question. A Democrat who polls better with the other party's voters than with his own has built something unusual, but unusual does not always mean durable. For now, the Democratic establishment is content to keep him in the tent, even if he keeps wandering into the other side's cloakroom.
When a senator's strongest allies sit across the aisle and his own party can only muster a polite "there's plenty of room," the room may be getting smaller, just not for the person they think.
