It had been four days since the husband of Brazilian Gisele Barreto Fetterman was admitted to a hospital in Pennsylvania after suffering a stroke when she received the news that Democratic Party voters had chosen him as the party’s candidate in the US Senate primaries.
“I had been sleeping for days in the hospital. I had to run home, take a shower and accept the nomination. It was very strange,” says the wife of John Fetterman, the deputy governor of the state, to the Sheet.
She, however, had a wit. In Pittsburgh, on May 17, she was applauded in her acceptance speech, drew laughter from the audience and defended her husband’s progressive banners.
What Gisele did not know at that moment is that Fetterman’s health would become the main topic of the dispute, perhaps the most crucial of the legislative elections that will take place on Tuesday (8), the so-called midterms.
The poor assessment of President Joe Biden’s administration threatens the Democrats’ grip on Congress, and Fetterman is one of the biggest bets to keep the fragile majority in the Senate.
Today the Senate is divided evenly, with 50 seats for Republicans and 50 for Democrats — under local rules, the vice president commands the Senate, so Kamala Harris has the power to break the tie in favor of the president’s party. Polls indicate that the margin in the House will remain tight in the next legislature, with the majority leaning towards Republicans.
In the House, polls indicate that Republicans should control the house.
Fetterman is running against GOP candidate Mehmet Oz, a doctor and TV celebrity backed by former President Donald Trump. The race is so important to Democrats because it could take the seat now held by a Republican senator, Pat Toomey, who has decided to retire.
What is worrying, however, is that Fetterman started the race with a large advantage over his rival, opening up 12 points of difference in the polls, and the curve has been narrowing until it points to a tie in the margin of error, according to the site’s poll aggregator. FiveThirtyEight, specializing in statistics.
Thus, the state has become the main battleground of midterms this year, and because of that, Democrats have concentrated efforts and mobilized from former President Barack Obama to Biden in the race. A pendulum state, in which voters have no established predilection for Democrats or Republicans and can change positions with each election, Pennsylvania was instrumental in the president’s victory in 2020.
This mobilization did not manage to change the main issue of the election, which bypassed the country’s proposals, the candidates’ curriculum or the divergence of ideologies. The main theme of the race is the state of health of Fetterman, who has not yet fully recovered from his stroke.
At 53 years old, the Democrat is a curious figure, which is different from the pattern of senators that, if elected, he will find on Capitol Hill. Standing over two meters tall, with a prominent goatee and many tattoos, he often participates in public agendas wearing a sweatshirt and sometimes shorts.
Before being elected Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania in 2018, he was mayor of Braddock, a Pittsburgh district with less than 2,000 inhabitants, from 2006 to 2019. the defense of public health and the rights of immigrants.
After the stroke, he drastically reduced public appearances and refused to provide detailed reports of his health, even though his doctor said he was in a position to run for office. Voters were only able to take the test in the only debate he agreed to participate in, at the end of October, when he came face to face with his opponent, known as Dr. oz.
The son of Turkish immigrants, Oz, 62, is most famous for hosting “The Dr. Oz Show,” a hit show with health and wellness tips that ran from 2009 to January this year. Conservative and trumpist, his lack of identification with Pennsylvania weighs against him – he lives in New Jersey. Among his proposals are reducing government spending, increasing border controls and banning abortion.
In the debate, held on the 25th, Fetterman opened the meeting by talking about his health condition and used the theme to attack his opponent. “I had a stroke, he [Oz] never let me forget it. I can get confused with some words during this debate, mix words”, he warned – and that’s what happened.
The next day, interpretations varied according to political orientation — Democrats saw the debate as a display of the Democrat’s dignity in front of voters, and Republicans called the performance proof that he was unfit to run for office.
THE Sheet Gisele says that her husband “is great, stronger every day, he travels all over the state campaigning and giving speeches to thousands of people”. “He had a health emergency, as millions of Americans do. The difference is that my family had to go through this super difficult time completely in public, with no time or space for him to take care of himself.”
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Gisele, 40, immigrated to the US as a child with her mother and became an activist for the rights of immigrants who enter the country irregularly, like her. She married in 2008 to Fetterman, with whom she has three children, when he was mayor. Today, she is a leading figure, with an entourage of fans on social media urging her to apply.
She gives up, says she has never been in politics — although her father has run for office a number of times in Rio de Janeiro, all without success. “I have a picture of a newborn wearing a shirt from his campaign. But politics is not for me. I fell for it again almost by accident, it’s funny how things happen.”
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