Pennsylvania Democrats are openly organizing to unseat one of their own. Sen. John Fetterman, who swept all 67 counties in the state's 2022 Democratic primary and won the general election, now faces a growing revolt from the party base that put him in office, and a list of potential challengers already jockeying for position ahead of the 2028 Senate primary.
The backlash centers on a string of votes where Fetterman sided with Republicans: funding the federal government over the objections of fellow Democrats, confirming a Trump cabinet nominee, backing border security, and standing alone among Senate Democrats against a resolution to limit the president's authority to strike Iran.
The price has been steep. Fetterman's job approval among Democratic voters collapsed from 79 percent in a June 2023 Quinnipiac University poll to just 22 percent by February 2026, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. No Senate Democrat voted against his own party more often than Fetterman did last year, according to CQ-Roll Call's annual vote studies, and the 20 percent of the time he broke ranks is now the central fact of his political life.
At least five names have surfaced as potential 2028 primary opponents. Former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb of Western Pennsylvania, who lost the 2022 primary to Fetterman, has used his X account to regularly attack the senator. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia, another 2022 primary rival, has done the same. Former U.S. Rep. Susan Wild of the Lehigh Valley, Rep. Chris Deluzio of Fox Chapel, and Rep. Brendan Boyle of Philadelphia round out the list of Democrats either publicly criticizing Fetterman or refusing to rule out a run.
None has formally declared. But the tone of their public statements leaves little doubt about where things are headed.
Boyle posted on X after Fetterman voted to confirm Markwayne Mullin as homeland security secretary:
"Once again Sen Fetterman shows why he is Trump's favorite Democrat. He needs to go."
Wild called Fetterman "such a disappointment" on X and added that "people worked so hard for Fetterman and he kicked them in the teeth."
Deluzio, in an interview with the Post-Gazette, was more measured but no less pointed. He cited Fetterman's support for the Iran strikes and his votes to fund the government without changes to ICE operations as areas of "big, profound disagreement." Asked about a possible primary challenge, Deluzio demurred, but only slightly:
"I'm running for re-election this year, 2026, which I do not take for granted, asking people to send me back to Washington. We'll see what 2028 brings. But I've got an election to run this year."
That is not a denial. It is a placeholder.
Lamb, meanwhile, has been traveling across Pennsylvania attending at least a dozen town halls and party events, according to AP News, often showing up where Democrats say Fetterman is absent. At one event, Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg asked the crowd: "Anyone seen John Fetterman here today?" The progressive organization Indivisible PA's steering committee went further last month, asking Fetterman to resign.
The most concrete threat comes from the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, which has announced it will back a primary challenger against Fetterman in 2028. The group has not named a candidate but said it is already training candidates, recruiting volunteers, and raising money.
The Washington Examiner reported that the group's decision followed Fetterman's vote for the Republican-led funding bill that ended the government shutdown. The Working Families Party posted on X: "We're primarying John Fetterman. Last week, Fetterman once again sold out working Pennsylvanians. He was the deciding vote for a Republican budget bill that will strip healthcare from over 400,000 Pennsylvanians."
The group added: "We deserve real working-class leadership in the U.S. Senate, not a Trump-enabling corporate Democrat."
A Newsmax report noted that a Quinnipiac University poll released in October found 54 percent of Democrats rated Fetterman negatively, while only one-third viewed him favorably, a sharp decline from the prior year.
The fury from the left obscures a basic fact: Fetterman voted with a majority of his party against a majority of Republicans 80 percent of the time last year. Pennsylvania's other senator, Republican Dave McCormick, backed the GOP 99 percent of the time. The gap between the two is enormous. But for a Democratic base that increasingly demands lockstep conformity, 80 percent is not enough.
Fetterman's breaks with his party have followed a consistent pattern. He repeatedly voted to keep the government open during a standoff that produced a record-long 43-day federal shutdown. He supported border security and deporting criminals in the country illegally, while opposing wholesale deportation of unauthorized immigrants. He backed Israel's military response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. He applauded strikes against the Iranian regime.
And in a move that drew particular fury from fellow Democrats, Fetterman was the only Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee to vote to confirm Mullin as homeland security secretary, allowing the panel to send the nomination to the Senate floor with a positive recommendation. He later voted to confirm Mullin on the floor, one of only two Democrats to do so.
At the same time, Fetterman is aligned with every other Senate Democrat in blocking Republican efforts to enact new voting restrictions. He is raising money for fellow Democrats ahead of this fall's midterm elections. He entered 2026 with $1.9 million in the bank, less than the $2.5 million then-Sen. Bob Casey had at the equivalent point in his last re-election campaign, but not a negligible sum.
Fetterman told Fox News Channel over the weekend that he sees no contradiction in his approach:
"I think I'm on the right side of reasonable."
He described himself as "the guy that's on the side of country over party, and I'm going to remain in that exact space." Breitbart reported that Fetterman has framed his approach more bluntly elsewhere: "I follow country, then party."
Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll, told the Post-Gazette he has no doubt about what's coming.
"I don't think there's any doubt that he's going to get primaried. In some ways he's doing what he thinks voters want, voters writ large, but that may sink him with the base voters in his own party."
Yost framed the situation as a test of something voters claim to want but rarely reward:
"It's an interesting test of the assumption or of the things that voters tell us, where they would like to see more compromise in our politics and less partisanship. It's part of the reason people are so dissatisfied. And so the question is: Can that kind of behavior help get him through a primary where he would be much better positioned in a general election?"
Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, noted that party loyalty has become more rigid. He said Fetterman is paying a real price for his independence.
"If you are breaking with your party, it's seen in a way that is more intense and negative than we would have seen in the past. Sen. Fetterman's decided that he's going to make those choices. And he is paying a price in terms of his standing within his own party."
Borick suggested Fetterman may be trying to carve out a new political lane entirely, one that doesn't fit neatly into either party's current mold. "Maybe he sees that there's just another place where he can break some new ground and transform Pennsylvania politics," Borick said, adding that "it seems like the more and more we go down the path, those types of options seem like they have to be explored more because I think this path is increasingly harder through the existing party."
Former Rep. Paul McHale, a Democrat from the Lehigh Valley who once bucked his own party to impeach President Bill Clinton, offered a more nuanced view. He acknowledged Fetterman's independence but questioned his judgment:
"My impression is that Sen. Fetterman is voting his conscience when he casts an independent vote, but that doesn't mean that he's voting wisely. So it is perfectly legitimate for another candidate to determine that the senator has voted in good faith, he has shown independence, but he may also have shown very bad judgment, and, as a result, is worthy of a challenge."
What Fetterman's critics call betrayal, most Americans outside the progressive base would call common sense. Voting to keep the government open. Supporting border enforcement against criminals. Standing with an ally under attack. Confirming a qualified cabinet nominee. These are not exotic positions. They are the ordinary expectations of governance.
But the modern Democratic primary electorate does not reward governance. It rewards conformity. Fetterman endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. He went from Democratic hero to something else entirely not because he moved right on the political spectrum, but because the party's activist class moved further left and demanded everyone follow.
The Working Families Party's pledge to primary him. The social media pile-on from Boyle, Wild, Kenyatta, and Lamb. The resignation demand from Indivisible PA. All of it sends a clear message to every Democrat in Washington: fall in line, or we will find someone who will.
Fetterman has refused to buckle on national security, and his party's base has made him pay for it. He was the only Senate Democrat to vote against limiting the president's ability to respond to Iran. He stood alone in committee to advance a homeland security secretary the country needed confirmed. For this, his approval among Democrats dropped 57 points in less than three years.
Kenyatta posted on X that a replacement senator "would work for the people of Pennsylvania who are paying record gas prices because of this illegal folly that has killed dozens of Americans and wounded hundreds of others." Lamb wrote that "we would pay for his forever war with our actual dollars and our kids' lives." The rhetoric from Fetterman's would-be replacements is heated, and aimed squarely at the positions where Fetterman sided with the national interest over party orthodoxy.
Fetterman has said he has no interest in switching parties. He remains a Democrat. He is increasingly isolated within his own caucus, but he continues to fundraise for Democratic candidates and vote with his party on most issues.
The question Yost raised is the right one: Can a senator who does what voters say they want, less partisanship, more compromise, survive a primary dominated by the voters who want the opposite?
If the answer is no, that tells you everything you need to know about which party has a tolerance problem, and it isn't the one Democrats keep pointing at.
