Braddock's Big Night
Two candidates with roots in a blighted steel town might be charting a new course for the Democratic Party
Braddock, Pennsylvania, a small exurb of Pittsburgh, home to fewer than 2,000 residents, played a massively outsized role in the results of the Pennsylvania primary election on May 17. Indeed, this Rust Belt town, all but left for dead after the collapse of the steel industry, could forecast what’s ahead for the Democratic Party.
We should be thrilled about that.
The former mayor of Braddock (and current Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor), John Fetterman, crushed the competition for the Democratic nomination for Senate. And Braddock’s current representative in the Pennsylvania State Legislature, Summer Lee, won an upset victory against the establishment’s choice, Steve Irwin, a lawyer from Pittsburgh, to represent the new 12th District in Congress. (As of this writing, the race has not been called for Lee, but is expected).
What’s notable about their victories isn’t just that they both have jumped to statewide and national prominence from a blighted town like Braddock––it’s that they were both the most outspoken progressive candidates in their respective contests. Lee is endorsed by the Justice Democrats and is onboard with their biggest policy proposals: the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and righteous opposition to the dominance of corporate America.
Fetterman has not jumped into bed with the Justice Democrats and avoids big labels and buzzy policy proposals, but he is an ardent supporter of legalizing marijuana, a $15 minimum wage (“at least”), abolishing the filibuster in the Senate––and he hasn’t exactly hidden the fact that he’s a Bernie guy.
Both candidates emphasize their Braddock roots in their messaging. To be fair, Braddock’s downfall is so extreme it’s irresistible as narrative drama: the town has lost 90% of its population since its heyday during the steel boom 50 years ago; the per capita income is below $20,000, and roughly 35% of the population is below the federal poverty line, including roughly half of the city’s children; the few factories that do remain have caused extreme environmental pollution, resulting in some of the worst childhood asthma rates in the country. (Though things improved under Fetterman’s mayorship as he expanded youth jobs programs under state grants, created green space, and sold Braddock as a haven for artists looking for affordable places to put down roots, Braddock still has a long way to go.)
But any candidate of any stripe could cite Braddock as foundational; one can imagine a big-business Democrat, or even a Republican, using its struggle as a case for expanding tax incentives for corporations to move in. Instead, both Fetterman and Lee have used Braddock as a jumping-off point as a way into an intersectional, plain-spoken progressivism.
Lee’s longform launch video––de rigeur for any Democratic candidate in the age of Twitter––enunciated this to a T, adhering better than the vast majority of candidates to the principles of the Race/Class Narrative (RCN) message frame developed by progressive leaders including messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio. The well-tested theory of RCN is that Democrats should always talk about issues of race and class together; even if you are speaking to a lily-white audience, you gain nothing by ignoring the fact that race and class are intertwined, i.e., “Corporate greed has forced a 25% decrease in real wages for steelworkers over the last decade” is just as powerful a message, even for white audiences, as, “Corporate greed has hurt real wages for steelworkers, especially Black steelworkers, who have seen their wages decrease by over 40% in the last decade.”
In the ad, Lee––who is Black, like over 70% of Braddock residents––makes an explicitly class-based, populist case blaming “those with money and power” for causing the economic downturn, who “then they blame us for the blight and crime.” This is all set against videos and stills of Black residents and the verdant, hardscrabble scenery. Then she makes a familiar turn, voicing support for big left-wing policy proposals and a closing line emphasizing that, “If poor and working people come together, we can fix our country.”
While Fetterman steers clear of the buzzwords, he embraces RCN, too. In a video on climate justice, he describes his opposition to “environmentally racist policy” that would have put a “four-lane interstate through a Black or brown community” that he rejected as mayor, emphasizing that pollution and climate change hurt of all of us, and communities of color in particular. Another video on his community involvement in Braddock takes special care to point to his longtime interest in the empowerment of Black youth through jobs, as a means of closing the racial wealth and achievement gap––again showing that everyone needs a decent job in order to build a life, but it’s especially tough for communities of color.
It would be one thing if these candidates were running for Mayor of Braddock––but they’re not; these messages were embraced by a large, diverse Democratic electorate. Lee’s district also includes the city of Pittsburgh and a plethora of other suburbs; Fetterman, of course, is running to represent the entire state.
And they both won their races over markedly more moderate opponents: Steve Irwin, Lee’s opponent, tied himself to “President Biden’s agenda” (which, of course, does not include Medicare for All and a Green New Deal), and more standard Democratic vernacular about “making college more affordable” and “lowering costs.” His campaign videos emphasize support for Biden’s infrastructure bill, vocational training, and “getting things done.” Interestingly, on his website he does note support for a $15 minimum wage and even “moving towards a single payer healthcare system,” but those items were left out of the campaign’s principal messaging.
Conor Lamb, Fetterman’s opponent who became an establishment darling in 2018 after winning an R+2 seat on the other side of Allegheny County, tacked even further to the center, going so far as to tar Fetterman as an out-of-touch Socialist last November. While his website hosted an exhaustive word salad of policy proposals, the messages put forth online and in ads focused on his “electability” vastly more than policy or vision.
While Irwin and Lamb lost on Election Night for differing reasons––Irwin got out-organized, while Lamb totally misread the appetites of Democratic voters and refused to adjust his message a whit––Lee and Fetterman’s candidacies together present an important learning opportunity for Democrats this year and beyond.
Democrats have been stymied by rural voters for most of my life. Especially since the 2016 election, as the once-monolithic labor union vote has started to drift rightward, party elites have favored candidates like Conor Lamb, or Amy McGrath, who ran for Senate in Kentucky in 2020 and lost by 19 points despite institutional support and fundraising assistance to the tune of $94 million. These are candidates who take pains to avoid any strong stances on issues and dabble in trendy right-wing stunts like refusing to support Nancy Pelosi’s speakership. By the same token, Joe Manchin, who strongly supported Lamb (a kiss of death among 2022 Democratic primary voters, which Lamb realized too late), is viewed as the “only” Democrat who could ever hope to win in West Virginia––which is to say, a Democrat who has so few fixed values that he winds up obstructing his own party’s agenda.
There has been one Democratic playbook for rural voters for much of my life, and while it hasn’t failed in every election––Conor Lamb has won his district three times; Joe Biden won back Rust Belt states that Hillary Clinton lost––it’s a defensive strategy. A roadmap to winning back rural and working-class voters that depends on avoiding a strong point of view is no roadmap at all.
With Fetterman and Lee, we may have a new roadmap. These two leaders, with their roots in the left-behind town of Braddock, have no allegiance to tradition, a deep sensitivity to the interconnectedness of race and class––and the assurance that their point of view will be well received by working-class voters, because they’ve lived it.
Which is not to say striking the right tone isn’t hard, or that their approach is a silver bullet; Fetterman may be right to avoid the buzzy policies that Lee leans into, as he has the tough task of crafting an appeal to an extremely varied state. And it’s doubtful that Lee, as a Black woman, would enjoy the same resounding support as Fetterman statewide, though it’s reasonable to expect that will change in time.
But I have hope that these two candidates’ November victories will shoot a hole through the conventional, calcified wisdom about electability and messaging that has held our party back for decades. There is a path to a new type of candidate, a new approach to governance, and a new point of view on how we communicate our values. It’s ours for the taking.