PHILADELPHIA — When one Pennsylvania Democratic operative got on a call Wednesday morning, his out-of-state clients didn’t want to talk about their own campaigns. They were asking about John Fetterman.
And inside Pennsylvania’s Democratic circles, insiders and elected officials fretted about Fetterman’s halting performance in Tuesday’s high-stakes U.S. Senate debate, questioning his campaign’s choice to participate, and in some cases, hoping the debate came too late for serious damage to sink in, according to several operatives and elected Democrats, most of whom didn’t want to go on record criticizing their home-state candidate.
“I was getting text messages throughout the debate and certainly when it concluded from Fetterman voters … saying, ‘Woah,’” said David Dix, a political consultant from Philadelphia who has worked on both Democratic and Republican campaigns.
