In his ads, and much of the public imagination, John Fetterman is a tattooed everyman from a rugged steel city outside Pittsburgh.
The phrase “blue collar tough guy” flashes across one of his TV ads as a grim-faced Fetterman poses before billowing smokestacks. A narrator says, “He’s looked different and been different his entire life.”
That persona has long irked Republicans, who say Fetterman’s distinctive visual cues leave an impression that he’s more working class — and more moderate — than he really is. .
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They say his image obscures his roots in a comfortable, suburban family that provided his financial security deep into adulthood.
Public records show — and Fetterman has openly acknowledged — that for a long stretch lasting well into his 40s, his main source of income came from his parents, who gave him and his family $54,000 in 2015 alone. That was part of the financial support his parents regularly provided when Fetterman’s only paying work was $150 a month as mayor of Braddock, a job he held from his mid-30s until he turned 49. Partway through his tenure, in 2013, he moved to an industrial-style loft he purchased from his sister for $1 after she paid $70,000 for it six years earlier.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/el...-20220803.html
