An isolated, angry John Fetterman is yet another challenge for Democrats

In June 2023, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) posted a video of her greeting her new neighbor on the first floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, John Fetterman, with a welcome wagon of apples, ginger beer and other Washington state fare.

Fetterman told Murray it was an “honor” to be her neighbor and gifted her a hoodie and a hat emblazoned with the word yinzer, a slang term for someone from Pittsburgh. “Can’t wait to see you more and more,” the Democrat said to his colleague.

Recently, the two senators had a very different interaction. In late January, Fetterman angrily confronted Murray off the Senate floor, accusing her of sabotaging him by releasing a proposed resolution condemning Donald Trump’s pardon of Jan. 6 rioters without his knowledge, according to two people with knowledge of the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions. Every Senate Democrat except Fetterman backed the measure, and Fetterman accused Murray of leaving him out intentionally.

The confrontation could not have happened between two more different senators. Murray, a soft-spoken and widely respected Senate veteran, stands well under a foot shorter than the 6-foot-8 freshman in her signature tennis shoes. Murray retorted that her staff had reached out to Fetterman’s repeatedly before releasing the measure. Fetterman’s office declined to respond to a list of written questions about this and other incidents described in this article. Asked about what happened, Murray said in a statement she’s “not looking back” and is ready to work with Fetterman to help solve problems.

Fetterman’s run-in with Murray is just one example of his isolation from his fellow Democrats, according to more than a dozen current and former lawmakers and staff from which the information in this article is drawn. His relationship with the Democratic Party has become increasingly strained while he’s faced protests by liberal activists and watched staffers flee. Some Democrats have been mystified at what they see as his standoffish behavior, saying he blows off meeting requests, spurns senators’ weekly lunches and has left the caucus’s private group chat.

Republicans see an opening and are openly courting Fetterman to join their 53-seat majority, even though the senator from Pennsylvania has said repeatedly he would never join the GOP. Sen. David McCormick (R-Pa.) and other Senate Republicans publicly defended Fetterman this month after a report in New York magazine detailed his erratic behavior. Fetterman spent time Monday evening in the Republican cloakroom off the Senate floor, bonding with some of his friends on the other side of the aisle.

» READ MORE: Dave McCormick calls for an end to ‘vicious, personal attacks’ against John Fetterman’s well-being and wife, Gisele

“We’re always looking to increase the number of our caucus and I’ve enjoyed working with him,” Sen. John Barrasso (Wyoming), the Republican whip, said Tuesday. “And we talk regularly. We talked last evening. We most certainly welcome him.”

The result is something of a Fetterman problem for Democrats, who are struggling to keep their caucus together as they seek a strategy to push back on Trump and retake the Senate next year against tough odds. Fetterman’s troubles also raise questions about the future of a talented and unfiltered politician who found a unique way to appeal to swing voters in a purple state and whom some have urged to run for president.

The conservative Club for Growth ran an ad in Pennsylvania on Sunday praising Fetterman and urging him to vote for Republicans’ big tax cuts and spending bill. The group’s president, David McIntosh, said he believes Democrats have targeted Fetterman because he’s strayed from “the talking points of the far left.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said Democrats need to understand where Fetterman is coming from and make sure he doesn’t drift toward Republicans as they attempt to recruit him.

“Why take the chance?” Gallego said. “We need to be a big-tent party, and he’s part of that tent.”

The challenge for Democrats is that Fetterman doesn’t always seem to want to stay in their tent. He has grown more isolated over the past year and appears disengaged from some basic aspects of his job, five people who have worked for and with him say. And he has faced more scrutiny following the New York magazine story, which quoted his former chief of staff raising concerns about his mental health, and an Associated Press account of him banging his hands on a table during a meeting this month with a teachers union after which one of his staffers wept.

» READ MORE: Inside Sen. John Fetterman’s office: canceled meetings, skipped votes and an outburst with Pa. teachers

Fetterman described the union meeting as “spirited” in a statement at the time. He has blamed critical coverage on disgruntled former staffers and has called the questions around his mental health invasive and inaccurate. “My doctors are like, ‘John is great,’” he told CNN last week, adding that he is following his medical treatment plan. “It’s incredibly invasive. Why are people talking about anyone’s personal medical things?”

Last year, he crashed his car into another vehicle while speeding, wrecking both cars, and his staffers told The Washington Post he had FaceTimed and texted while driving in the past. In 2022, Fetterman suffered a stroke that left him with auditory processing issues that made it difficult for him to understand people without the help of captions. In 2023, he checked himself in to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for six weeks to treat his depression.

Some Democrats have struggled to connect with the senator, and he left leadership in the dark until the last minute on how he planned to vote on some of Trump’s highest-profile nominees, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi. He’s also emerged as a vocal critic of the party at times, bashing his colleagues who called for Joe Biden to step aside from the presidential race, and those who have criticized Israel’s conduct in its war on Hamas. In January, he traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Trump, which Fetterman later described as a “kind” and positive conversation.

Fetterman remains close with several senators, including Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Katie Boyd Britt (R-Ala.). Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) talked recently with Fetterman about how hard it is to serve in the Senate while raising young children. Britt, who had dinner with Fetterman and Welch on Monday, faulted Democrats for not doing more to stand up for Fetterman in recent weeks, calling it “shameful.”

» READ MORE: A Republican group cozies up to John Fetterman in new ad as his relationship with Dems becomes more strained

Senators in Democratic leadership downplayed any tensions. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called Fetterman a “good legislator” who is doing a good job. Sen. Dick Durbin (Illinois), the Democratic whip, said leadership had been unsure of how Fetterman would vote on occasion but that such uncertainty was not unusual. Durbin’s team and Schumer are in regular touch with Fetterman ahead of votes. “We do that with all the senators,” Durbin said. “Some are predictable, others questionable. We always check.”

Fetterman has missed 30 Senate votes this year, more than anyone except for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Murray. He seldom shows up to meetings of the committees on which he sits, although he has attended three Senate Commerce Committee hearings in the past two weeks after reporters asked about his absences. His staff has frequently canceled meetings he has scheduled with constituents or others in his Senate office, with Fetterman declining to join them in a nearby conference room and instead sitting in his darkened office on his phone, three former staffers said.

Fetterman didn’t always behave this way. The tattooed Fetterman has never exactly tried to fit in, as he flouted the Senate’s norms with his shorts-and-a-hoodie work uniform and his often profane social media presence. But many of his Democratic colleagues admired him for overcoming the odds and winning a Senate seat in a swing state after suffering a stroke. They rallied around him as he openly shared his struggle with depression following his admission to Walter Reed for treatment just a few months after joining the Senate in 2023.

After returning from his six-week hospital stay, Fetterman dined nearly every week with a colleague, according to two former staffers. That began to change last year.

“In the fall, he had started to build relationships with other senators, but that has fallen off a cliff,” Adam Jentleson, Fetterman’s former chief of staff, wrote to Fetterman’s doctor in an email in May 2024 that raised concerns about his mental health. The email was first reported by New York magazine. “He comes up with reasons they are all out to get him or secretly hate him, and will launch into endless tirades about why they are all terrible and he is the only sane person.”

The senators Fetterman fell out with included Bob Casey, a Democrat who was the other senator from Pennsylvania before losing reelection last year, Jentleson wrote. (“John and I have always had different styles and approaches to the job, but we had a strong relationship while I was in the Senate,” Casey said in a statement.)

In the first weeks of the new Trump administration, Fetterman clashed with his colleagues, including the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. She approached him in January as he left the Senate floor to encourage him to withhold his vote on sanctioning the International Criminal Court. Fetterman rudely dismissed her request to talk, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation, and then suggested to her he would be easier to work with if she had put him on her committee. (Committee assignments are typically determined based on seniority, although the power to put Democrats on committees ultimately rests with Schumer).

Asked about the encounter by The Post this week, Shaheen downplayed it. “I didn’t have an issue with him,” she said.

Fetterman said his differences with other Democratic senators stem from disagreements on policies, including his outspoken support for Israel during the Gaza war, border security and his vote to advance a Republican spending bill last month that most Democrats opposed. “There has been friction, but certainly not reflective of relationships,” Fetterman told reporters Tuesday.

Schumer addressed the tension in a closed-door lunch with senators earlier this year that Fetterman did not attend, according to two people familiar with the remarks. Schumer said he was talking to Fetterman ahead of key votes and urged members to engage with Fetterman as well.

But engaging can be difficult. Fetterman does not typically attend Senate Democrats’ weekly lunches and skipped a one-day retreat last week. He also took himself off a Signal chain that Democratic senators use informally to keep in touch. And he is barred from the Senate floor — where senators chat with colleagues — because he refuses to wear a coat and tie, which senators voted in 2023 to require for men after some objected to Fetterman’s attire. (He votes from the doorway to the chamber instead of entering.)

“I would like to see him more, at the lunch,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). “It would be a good thing.”

Despite his differences with Democrats, Fetterman has said repeatedly he could never become a Republican, and some Senate Republicans have dismissed the possibility.

“I think that’s kind of a fantasy,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “Sen. Fetterman is not even close to being a Republican. Even though I think the way he’s been treated has been pretty unfair, I don’t see him switching parties.”