Fetterman Says He Has ‘No Plans’ to Leave the Democratic Party

With control of the Senate expected to come down to just a few seats in the midterms, some Republicans have started to dream about persuading an increasingly isolated Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, to join their party.

On Thursday, Mr. Fetterman shut down the idea.

Mr. Fetterman said in an opinion piece in The Washington Post that while he was “at odds” with Democrats’ approach to foreign affairs and immigration, he had “no plans to leave” his longtime party.

“My values have not changed, and I have always turned to those kinds of ideals that defined being a Democrat,” wrote Mr. Fetterman, a first-term Democrat. “I remain strongly pro-choice, pro-weed, pro-LGBT, pro-SNAP, pro-labor and even pro-rib-eye over bio slop. I refuse to cave on my conscience because Pennsylvania deserves someone who is honest and can work across the aisle.”

Mr. Fetterman has grown more conservative since his election in 2022 and has broken sharply with his party’s position on Israel. And he has been far more willing than others in his party to offer praise to President Trump.

Today, the senator appears to be viewed more favorably by Republican voters in his state than by Democrats. A Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania voters in February found that while 73 percent of Republican voters approved of Mr. Fetterman’s job performance, just 22 percent of Democrats did. Many rank-and-file Democrats in the state feel “absolutely tricked” by Mr. Fetterman’s transformation, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.

The senator is likewise at odds with leaders in his party. He has a strained relationship with his state’s most powerful Democrat, Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the two men rarely speak to each other. Earlier this year, Mr. Shapiro dodged a question about whether he would support Mr. Fetterman if the senator ran for re-election in 2028.

Mr. Fetterman still mostly votes in line with Democrats. And he argued in his opinion piece that he had remained true to the principles he held when, as a hoodie-wearing progressive, he ran for Senate in 2022, securing a victory that flipped a seat and helped propel his party into the majority in the Senate.

“My focus remains on working together to find wins and deliver for my constituents. And though I was elected as a Democrat, I’m proud to serve all Pennsylvanians,” Mr. Fetterman wrote. “It has become increasingly lonely to serve in that way, but I firmly believe it’s what is needed.”

Mr. Fetterman’s sartorial style hasn’t changed. But his posture toward his party has. Once a darling of the progressive movement, Mr. Fetterman had firmly rejected the progressive label by 2023.

He said in his opinion piece that his party had gone astray in its stance on immigration and its criticism of the unpopular war in Iran, a rallying point for leading Democrats, who argue that the conflict is unnecessary, reckless and poorly planned.

Mr. Fetterman wrote that his party’s “recent presidential candidates identified Iran as a significant global threat, one that shouldn’t be able to acquire a nuclear weapon.”

“They emphasized a view I still hold: that the leading state sponsor of terror should be held to account,” Mr. Fetterman said. “I appreciate that this administration acted on the threat Iran and its proxies pose.”

He argued that other Democrats had shifted on immigration, too. “It wasn’t long ago when Democrats wanted a secure border,” he wrote.

He suggested that his party’s default position across all issues had devolved into the “opposite of whatever President Donald Trump says.”

The unusual political path the senator has chosen — and reports last year that Mr. Fetterman, who had a stroke during his 2022 run for Senate, could sometimes behave erratically — may have eaten into his support in the Democratic Party.

Politico reported this week that some Senate Republicans were carefully and quietly gauging Mr. Fetterman’s interest in joining their party.

Sharif Street, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party from 2022 to 2025, said he’d had to hold his breath after the news that Mr. Fetterman had written the opinion piece.

But in the end, it did not deliver the message some Republicans might have been seeking.

“I’d be a terrible Republican,” the senator wrote, “who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.”