If you think about it(and youprobablyhaven't),being lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania is a sweet gig.
You get paid a good chunk of change - $160,000 a year. You get a nice house to live in. You get servantsto cook andclean and mow the lawn.You getastaffto do stuff you don't want to do.You get a budget to buy groceries and whatnot. You get state police troopers to drive you around and make sure nobody tries to kill you, even though 99.9 percent of the public couldn't pick the lieutenant governor out of a police lineup.
In return, you do, well, not much.
Sure, the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate, but it's largely ceremonial. The office also presides over the parole board. But the primary duty of the lieutenant governor is to check the obituaries every day to see whether the governor is still alive. If the governor has survived another day, thelieutenant governor can go back to doing whatever it is he or she does, which, in recent years, includedabusing the staff, treating state police troopers like servants and sendingyour spouse to an event at a church hall to flip off and throw a co*ke at a political rival.
Which brings us to our current lieutenant governor, Mike Stack.
Stack is, well, a piece of work. His wife, Tonya, yeah, piece of work.
On the one hand, their alleged treatment of their staff and the state trooperswasawful. Ordering state troopers to activate their lights and sirens in non-emergency situations, yeah, that was pretty bad. And when Stack's wife appeared, on his behalf, at a fundraiser for a foundationthat benefits fallen soldiers, named for a fallen soldier, she reportedly greeted a political rival with the kind of gesture you see eight times a daydriving on Route 30 and then threw a soda on him – all within sight of the widow of the fallen soldier.
On the other hand, until then,and untilapress conference in whichStacksaid he "said things in anger and stress and frustration that I wish Ihadn't,"youprobably had no idea who thelieutenantgovernor was. Give him that – Mike Stack put the office on the map.
The lieutenant governorapparently has a lot of time on his hands.
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The lieutenant governor is elected separately from governor, so you can't really call the person a "running mate." In the case of Stack, Gov. Tom Wolf has treated himlike a neighborhood feral cat– he puts a bowl of food out once in a whilebut doesn't let him in the house. (It's like in the early episodes of the HBO political satire "Veep" that featured a running joke of the vice president asking her secretary whether the president called and the secretary always saying nope.)
The point is, the office oflieutenantgovernor is pretty dull. Even those in power in the state capital don't care, at least they don't until he starts berating state police troopers, which, when you think about it, isn't a very smart thing to so. Those people are armed.
And usually nobody pays attention to whoever is running for the office because, well, it just doesn't matter. Voters, more or less, just pick someone at random, sort of like how they elected justices to the state Supreme Court and whatnot.
But next year will be different.
Next year, theDemocraticprimary for lieutenant governor is going to be interesting. It may even be fun.
John Fetterman is running for the office.
As it is, there are at least three other candidates, and they are all pretty conventional. Fetterman stands out because he, well, stands out.
Yes, his appearance. That's the first thing anyone notices about him, andit's difficult to miss. He is a big guy, a former standout on the football field at Central York High.He is 6-8 and has a shaved head and tattoos. He doesn't wear suits; most of the time he wears a work shirt and gym shorts. He drives a pickup truck. When you first encounter him, you think he escaped from the set of "Sons of Anarchy."
But thenyou listen to him.
The man has ideas. And he knows how to get things done, even when the odds are stacked against him.
He won his first term as mayor of Braddock, a downtrodden and forgotten steeltown in the Mon Valley,by one vote. He didn't run for mayor tosatisfy his ego. He did it to make a difference. He established community gardens. When the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center closed its hospital in town, he convinced theAlleghenyHealth Network to build an urgent care facility in town. He convinced Levis to make a commercial in the borough and used the money Levis paid the townto convert an abandoned church into a community center.
When he ran for the U.S. Senate, I spent a day with him in Braddock. People there love him. Here's an example of the kind of politics he practices. When I was with him, a woman approached him and told him she needed a new hearing aid. He told her not to worry about it; he'd take care of it.
It was interesting that during his Senate run, he was often cast as a marginal, or unconventional, candidate, mostly because of his appearance.
And perhaps he is unconventional, in a good way. He says what he thinks, and unlike another populist who says whatever comes into hismind – the one with the orangehair – heisthoughtful and, well, intelligent.
And he would be an interesting, perhaps transformationallieutenantgovernor. You wouldn't have to worry about him abusing the household staff at the lieutenantgovernor'smansion or his security detail because he will probably refuse those trappings of the office. By the force of his personality and hiscommitment to justice and equality, he could use the bully pulpit provided by the office to bring change.
He would be an interesting match with Wolf. I believe that Wolf would benefit from having Fetterman there. I don’t think Wolf would shove him off to the side and not take his counsel because Fetterman and Wolf have very similar goals when it comes to governing.And by virtue of his appearance, which could be intimidating to some,Fetterman would come in handy when it came time to twist arms in the Legislature.
On his website Fetterman wrote, "As a small-town mayor, I can only help so many people. I want to be able to do more, not only for my community, but for my commonwealth. I’m running for Lieutenant Governor to be a champion for every community and person in this state, especially those that have been left out or left behind."
There was another recent candidate for public office who had successwith thatmessage.Theprimarydifference–other than hair, of course – is thatFetterman means it and is not just trying to con people into voting for him, turning on them oncehe's elected by proposing tax breaks for millionaires while giving the middle and working classes nothing.
"Iwill bring to Harrisburg an understanding of what life is actually like in places like Allentown, Johnstown, Erie, and other forgotten cities across Pennsylvania. These places matter. They deserve to be believed in, and they deserve to be helped. I believe that things can get better, and that if a community that’s lost as much as Braddock can start to turn things around, then any community can – whether it’s West Philly, or Monessen, or Bethlehem.
"What we’ve done in Braddock is a roadmap for how we can begin to build a stronger Pennsylvania for all – so that every child born here has an equal shot, regardless of zip code."
Speaking of ZIP codes, when people make a big deal about his ink, they neglect to describe his tattoos.
His right forearm bears a tattoo of Braddock's ZIP code. His other forearm is inked with the dates of every homicide in Braddock since he has taken office.
And that says a lot about the man.
Reach MikeArgentoat 717-771-2046 or atmike@ydr.com.
