Donald Trump on Saturday openly encouraged Democratic US senator John Fetterman to switch parties and become a Republican just weeks before the federal midterm elections could reshape control of Congress.
“I’d love to see him as a Republican,” the presidents told reporters at Joint Base Andrews as he returned to Washington DC from a rally in Tennessee. “He does better as a Republican than he does as a Democrat.”
The comments were among the most direct overtures by Trump to woo Fetterman into his Republican party, a matter of growing importance as the GOP could lose its Senate majority in November’s midterms. With his everyman appeal, Fetterman was a Democratic star when he was first elected to the Senate in ۲۰۲۲. But during his time in Washington, he has split with Democrats on issues ranging from immigration to Israel, leading to speculation that he might switch parties.
A representative for Fetterman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fetterman has repeatedly rejected the notion of becoming a Republican, writing in the Washington Post in May that he would be a “terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats”. His relationship with fellow Democrats became more tenuous after he recorded a video for the Republican midterm convention in September praising his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Republican Dave McCormick, suggesting there were extremists in his party.
“I’m always going to stand with America,” Fetterman said in the video. “I’m always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life.”
Also in September, Fetterman described himself seemingly inadvertently as a “lifelong Republican” during a fireside chat at the Texas Tribune festival in Austin.
Such flirtations with the Republican party – if not his slip of the tongue in Austin – could make it extremely difficult for Fetterman to win the Democratic nomination for another term in the Senate. Trump raised that prospect on Saturday as he encouraged the party switch.
Democrats need to pick up four seats to retake the Senate majority, a once remote prospect that remains challenging for the party. But Trump’s unpopularity and the economic fallout from the Iran war have intensified headwinds for the Republican party, making Democrats more bullish about a path to Senate control.
If Democrats picked up the four seats for a ۵۱-seat majority, that could put Fetterman in an influential position, reducing the incentive to switch parties.
The last senator whose party switch affected control of the chamber was Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who left the GOP in ۲۰۰۱ to give Democrats a narrow majority. Former Pennsylvania US senator Arlen Specter’s decision to abandon Republicans in ۲۰۰۹ helped Democrats achieve a supermajority.
