Senate candidate John FettermanD-Pa., removed mentions of Black Lives Matter from its campaign website last month, a review of archived webpages showed.
The “Issues” page on Fetterman’s website currently includes sections on inflation, criminal justice reform, legalizing cannabis, renewable energy, immigration, and many other topics, but does not include any sections devoted to Black Lives Matter. Archived copies of the page, however, show that as recently as August 22, the same page exposed Fetterman’s commitment to Black Lives Matter.
A previous version of the campaign website, under a section titled “Black Lives Matter”, stated, “John served as mayor of a city that is more than 80% black, and has championed the idea that Black Life matters.” ,
This appears to have been the line on Fetterman’s website since February 2021, the month he announced he would run for Senate. Fetterman secured the Democratic nomination for the seat in May, setting up a showdown against the Republican nominee. Dr. Mehmet Ozu in November.
Fetterman spokesman Joe Calvello said it was “wrong” to suggest that the campaign removed all Black Lives Matter references. He explained that Fetterman made reference to Black Lives Matter in a “personal video” on the site addressing gun violence. In the video, which was published in April, Fetterman says that, in the past, he has never seen the media or the general public care about “black lives matter.”
“A section that you are referencing was removed when we updated and expanded our issues page weeks ago,” Calvello said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Voters have a right to know where we stand, and we are proud to clearly state our platform on our website.”
Meanwhile, Fetterman — who is the current lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and former mayor of Braddock, an eastern suburb of Pittsburgh — has been criticized for a 2013 incident in which he pulled a gun at a black jogger. He allegedly chased the man he suspected of committing the crime, in a pickup truck with a shotgun and kept him in custody until police arrived. Jogger was eventually found innocent and released.
“He was a white man with a gun chasing a black man,” Fawn Walker-Montgomery, a former city council member from a jurisdiction near Braddock, told NBC News in April. “I used to be on council at McKesport, and even if I chased a man with a gun, I would still be in jail. He’s showing he doesn’t know about his white privilege.”
Mark Kelly Tyler, a Democratic organizer in Philadelphia, said that anyone who thinks the event will have no effect on the decision of black voters is “living in fantasy land.” Michael Nutter, the last black mayor of Philadelphia, told NBC News that Fetterman should “just be ‘angry’ and apologize.
He has also received criticism for his positions on criminology and criminal justice reform. Fetterman’s campaign recently retracted comments he had made that appeared to advocate for the release of persons convicted of second-degree murder.
Fetterman had previously indicated his support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In June, he expressed support for the movement in a tweet, saying that Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, should have been made a federal holiday “long ago”.
“Today we celebrate liberation + reflect the long shadow of systemic racism in America,” he tweeted. “PA has always stood by the unshakable truth that Black families matter + Black lives matter.”
The post is his most recent tweet with the phrase “Black Lives Matter”.
In 2016, during his first run for Senate, he said he had a “Black Lives Matter kind of worldview”.
“I have never positioned myself as an anti-incumbency. In fact, I was the only elected official in my race, I would point out,” he said at the time. “Katie McGinty never held elected office and” [Joe] Sestak’s only elected office was one term, I believe, before running in Congress.
“So the idea that I was anti-establishment — I just ran over what I thought were important, common sense issues whether it was a living wage, marijuana legalization, a Black Lives Matter kind of worldview, but also a community policing was.”
He said it was “common sense” that cities that rejected the Black Lives Matter movement would have higher crime rates.
Fetterman also wrote a blog post titled “Black” on Medium that year. lives. Case.”
“The Black Lives Matter movement has brought many inequalities to the national conversation that I have worked to confront here at Braddock,” he wrote. “I’m so grateful for that because we need to realize that as far as America treats African-Americans, black lives don’t matter in this country.”
Fetterman concluded the post by saying that the nation needs to recognize how “deeply embedded” inequality is in the country.
Fox News Digital reporter Kyle Morris contributed to this report.