Democrats get tough on crime as Republicans go for a weak spot

As right-wing candidates try to catch up, they’re pummelling their rivals on policing and prison – and the Democrats are taking notice

John Fetterman (R) and Joe Biden (AP)

On Wednesday, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman agreed to debate his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz. Dr Oz has been pummeling his Democratic opponent on not debating him – this after the Democrat suffered a stroke shortly before the May primary, which he nonetheless won handily.

Mr Fetterman told Holly Otterbein of Politico (a friend of the newsletter) that he always intended to debate Dr Oz, saying the delay was simply about “addressing some of the lingering issues of the stroke, the auditory processing, and we’re going to be able to work that out.”

The road to the debate has been anything but smooth. Dr Oz’s campaign team drew outrage when it jokingly offered to “pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby” – in a statement that also hit Mr Fetterman for being soft on crime.

Specifically, it criticized him for leading the charge to commute the sentences for Lee and Dennis Horton, two men who were convicted of second-degree murder after they picked up their friend named Robert Leaf just after he had committed a murder. The two men maintained they’d had no knowledge of ihs crime, but were nonetheless imprisoned for longer than Mr Leaf was. Both are now working on Mr Fetterman’s campaign.

Going after two innocent men may not have been wise, but Republicans clearly see crime as a winning issue. After all, Republican victories in numerous swing districts in 2020 spooked many Democrats, who worried that slogans like “defund the police” cost them races – and nearly their fragile majority in the House of Representatives.

On his recent visit to Pennsylvania, Donald Trump spent much of his time – when he wasn’t fuming about the FBI executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago – fulminating about how dangerous cities like Philadelphia are, blaming Democratic policies.

He also stood up for cops, demanding that Democrats “leave our police alone”; while conceding there are some “bad apples” in the ranks, be insisted they are “very few” – missing that the point of bad apples is that they “spoil the bunch.” And this was before he (baselessly) accused Mr Fetterman of taking illegal drugs and likened him to a “teenager getting high in his parents’ basement.”

“He hides under his hoodie and he wants to eliminate lifetime prison sentences for convicted murderers, is calling for the release of, like I said, one third of the inmates from prison,” Val Biancello, a sometime pro-Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention, said about Mr Fetterman’s policies. “Violent crime is at an all time high here in Philadelphia. I live right outside of Philadelphia. I was born there and raised there.”

The claim about Mr Fetterman’s supposed radicalism on prison reform is a constant talking point in the Pennsylvania race. PolitiFact has reported that in 2020, Mr Fetterman approvingly quoted the state’s then-corrections secretary – who was appointed by a Republican governor – saying that Pennsylvania “could reduce our prison population by 1/3 and not make anyone less safe”. Asked about reducing the prison population for people older than 50, he replied that “We’re actively trying to audit our population to identify those inmates that are most deserving”.

For his part, Mr Fetterman recently released an ad about his record as mayor of Braddock, touting the fact that he got into politics after two students he taught were killed. “We did whatever it took to fund our police,” he said, distancing himself from the left-wing mantra, before saying that on his watch, Braddock stopped gun deaths for five years, a message to please liberals who want to end gun violence.

Incidentally, Mr Fetterman’s biggest stumbling block during the Democratic Senate primary was a story of him chasing down an unarmed Black man while brandishing a gun – a tale that’s now the focus of a new ad from Dr Oz’s campaign.

Other Democrats have taken note that a “soft on crime” label could leave them vulnerable. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General and prospective governor Josh Shapiro has touted his plan to hire 2,000 new police officers during his bid for governor; in North Carolina, Democratic Senate nominee Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of the state supreme court, has touted her support from law enforcement, saying “I know that police officers need more funding ... for recruitment, retention, training, mental health and addressing the opioid crisis.”

And it goes right to the top. When Joe Biden visited Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania last week, he accentuated the need to fund police and laid out his plan to recruit 100,000 additional officers. And tellingly, the president detailed that plan in a speech delivered in the district represented by Matt Cartwright – who despite being a Democrat held on to a seat Mr Trump carried in both 2016 and 2020.