Oz May Be Toast

John Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, PA, and still lives there. I spent my first 36 years next door, so to speak, in another borough in southwest Pennsylvania, and the first seven years of my working life in Braddock itself, at a local business on - what else - Braddock Avenue. My time in that part of Allegheny County predated Mr. Fetterman's by more than a few years, but our experiences overlap significantly. Even when I still lived there, and certainly during Fetterman's residence and tenure, Braddock had become frayed and shopworn.

Fetterman came to Braddock in 2001 to serve with AmeriCorps. He took up permanent residence in 2004. At that point, the former nexus of the U. S. steel industry, and home of Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill and first Free Library, wasn't what it'd been during my years. By the time Fetterman arrived, Braddock had been hit hard.  The borough had lost 90% of its population, was declared financially distressed in 1988, and even today has no real supermarkets, gas stations or ATMs.

Fetterman's accomplishments during his first term as mayor are particularly poignant to someone like me. Despite having two college degrees, I had to leave the Braddock area in order to find work. Following his election, one of Fetterman's first acts was to set up a website for Braddock, and to establish programs to improve the borough's poor economy. Other of his efforts included converting vacant lots into parks and gardens, building the town's first public basketball court, and establishing a two-acre organic urban farm, worked by teenagers of the Braddock Youth Project. To help fund such programs, Fetterman established relationships with local non-profit organizations and Allegheny County's economic development program. As an example, Fetterman helped secure a $400,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation , intended for the building of a “green roof”, which provided 100 summer construction jobs for local youth.

Join me in a wahoooo! The empathetic John Fetterman is leading the surly Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race by 11 points, according to a Fox News poll. The poll, released Thursday, July 28, found that Fetterman is backed by 47 percent of registered Pennsylvania voters surveyed, while Oz has the loyalty of only 36 percent. The poll was conducted from July 22 to 26, and surveyed 908 registered Pennsylvania voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, so no matter how one slices it, any hope Oz might have of overcoming Fetterman is baloney. Possibly relevant to that, the Oz campaign has reportedly decided to refrain from campaigning on the issue of abortion.

Sometimes the good guys do win ...