Conor Lamb says John Fetterman’s afraid to debate, calling shotgun incident ‘a huge problem’

U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb issued a direct attack Thursday against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, signaling a clear shift in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary for Senate as it enters the final stretch.

Lamb accused Fetterman, the front-runner in the race, of dodging scrutiny on a controversial incident from his past that he said could “single-handedly” cost Democrats a Senate seat.

It’s the first time Fetterman’s been directly attacked, marking what could be a pivot in the tone and intensity of the race. For months, the incident — in which Fetterman chased a Black jogger and then pulled a shotgun on him to keep him from leaving — has loomed in the background. Lamb had never directly raised the incident before. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, the only Black candidate in the race, has denounced Fetterman for vigilantism and called for an apology but not outright attacked him publicly.

Neither had so explicitly sought to inject the incident into the race.

The tweets Lamb posted Thursday night came after Fetterman said he would not attend the first Democratic debate Sunday, and as Lamb has struggled to make up ground.

“We all know why John Fetterman isn’t coming to the debate on Sunday,” Lamb wrote. “He doesn’t want to talk about the fact that he chased down an unarmed Black man and held him at gunpoint. That’s the elephant in the room. And we have to talk about it.”

» READ MORE: John Fetterman addresses 2013 incident in which he pulled a gun on a man who turned out to be an unarmed Black jogger

While Republicans running for Senate have been insulting each other for months, the Democratic race had been more mild-mannered. Lamb’s tweets set off an exchange between the campaigns that was heated and personal.

Fetterman’s campaign responded quickly, calling the attack “pathetic” and noting Lamb’s meager poll numbers.

“Every day it gets harder and harder for Conor to keep screaming that he is a winner, when he is clearly losing this race,” said Fetterman campaign spokesperson Joe Calvello. “And to be clear, John Fetterman isn’t afraid of s—, let alone a bland politician like Conor Lamb.”

The candidates have participated in several forums, but the Muhlenberg College event in Allentown is the first debate. Event organizers say it will go on with an empty podium to mark Fetterman’s absence. Fetterman has committed to attending three other scheduled debates, on April 21 and April 25, and one in May in Philadelphia.

Fetterman’s campaign said he is skipping Muhlenberg’s debate in part because it’s likely to get fewer viewers midday on a Sunday than the three prime-time debates, which will be broadcast by news sites and TV stations. Sunday’s debate will be broadcast on the Pennsylvania Cable Network and livestreamed for free on PCN’s website.

Lamb tweeted that Fetterman was skipping the debate because “he has no explanation” for pulling the gun and is “afraid of his own record. That’s a huge problem when we’re picking our nominee for the biggest race in the country. We all know the Republicans will spend millions putting this video on every TV in Pennsylvania.”

The jogger incident has lingered for Fetterman, who pursued a man in 2013 and pulled a shotgun on him. Fetterman has defended his actions to reporters by saying he believed that the man, who turned out to be an unarmed Black jogger, had been involved in a shooting. Fetterman was mayor of Braddock at the time and said he heard gunshots not far from his home, saw someone running in the area, called police, and then pursued the man himself to stop him from fleeing. An officer who responded to reports of gunfire searched the man, Christopher Miyares, and found he was unarmed, according to a 2013 police report.

Fetterman has maintained he didn’t know the man’s race or point the gun directly at him. Miyares disputed that when asked by The Inquirer in April 2021, saying he didn’t believe Fetterman didn’t know his race and that Fetterman did point the gun at him. In the same letter, Miyares said one mistake shouldn’t stop Fetterman from having the chance to become a senator and endorsed his campaign.

The incident received relatively little attention in 2016, when Fetterman lost his first Senate run in the Democratic primary. But it has drawn more scrutiny this time, given Fetterman’s front-runner status and increased attention to police killings of Black men. And while Fetterman has talked about the shotgun incident in interviews with reporters and in a Medium post, he has yet to address it in a large public setting such as a debate.

Lamb also accused Fetterman of dodging other key rooms, like a Black clergy forum in January, where he likely would have faced questions about the incident.

While leading candidates often try to maintain the status quo rather than risk changing circumstances, Fetterman has been criticized for a campaign that is less accessible than most. Some Democrats worry about his ability to handle scrutiny in a general election without tough vetting in the primary.

He’s setting up a scenario where he won’t face those questions in a debate until April 21, with just over three weeks to go until the primary.

Lamb’s attack came as he’s campaigned hard but continued to trail Fetterman, who entered the race better funded and better known. An Emerson poll on Thursday found Fetterman at 33% and Lamb at 10% support among likely primary voters, only a few percentage points higher than Kenyatta and emergency room doctor Kevin Baumlin, who dropped out of the race on Thursday.

Fetterman’s campaign called Lamb’s statements the work of a sore loser.

“There are better ways to handle losing an election than what Conor Lamb is doing,” Calvello said.

Lamb’s team, in turn, doubled down on their demand that Fetterman publicly discuss the incident.

“All John needs to do is show up and explain why he thinks it’s OK to point guns at unarmed Black people,” campaign manager Abby Nassif-Murphy said. “You don’t need polls to know that’s wrong and people won’t vote for him.”

Kenyatta repeated his call for Fetterman to apologize.

“As a Black man in this country, I know how badly this encounter could have ended,” Kenyatta said Thursday. “For years John has failed to truly apologize for his vigilantism or own the fact that what he did was so dangerous and wrong. LG Fetterman must leave the candidate protection program and publicly debate his record on this and other issues.”

Staff writer Jonathan Tamari contributed to this article.