Staff Reports
At 12:51 in the morning, NBC News and ABC News both declared that Fetterman had won the contest for lieutenant governor of the state. Other news outlets quickly followed suit. According to a report in the New York Times, as of 1:00 a.m., nearly 88 percent of the vote had been counted. Fetterman received 49 percent of the response, while Oz garnered 48 percent of the response.
It's a big win for Democrats because Fetterman will take over for retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania's seat in the Senate. The Senate was tied heading into the evening, thus the loss of Pennsylvania by the Republican Party might be seen as a step toward a majority for the Democrats in the Senate.
The outcomes make critical battleground states with vulnerable Democrats, such as Nevada's Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, Arizona's Senator Mark Kelly, and Georgia's Senator Raphael Warnock, even more important. The Republican Party needs to win two additional seats and maintain their hold on Wisconsin and Utah in order to gain a majority in the Senate. In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is locked in a tight race with his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, and in Utah, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has a lead over his independent opponent, Evan McMullin, with 55 percent of the vote in.
Following the stroke that Fetterman suffered in May, he has struggled with challenges related to auditory processing, and his difficulties with speaking have been evident at public appearances. The sole discussion between the two candidates took place on October 25, just two weeks before the election. The Democratic candidate, who had a significant lead in the polls in the late summer, took part in the debate with Oz.
Before the pair's debate, mail-in voting had already been well under way for quite some time. During the discussion, Fetterman relied on a closed captioning system to communicate, and voters gained an honest peek into his problems after suffering a stroke.
During a Democratic primary debate in May, the candidate who called himself "John Fetterwoman" stated that if elected to the Senate, he would make it a top priority to do rid of the filibuster and enact legislation about abortion.
The record of the Democrat is also one of radicalism when it comes to matters of law and order and the administration of criminal justice. As the state's Lieutenant Governor, Fetterman is in charge of the state's Board of Pardons, which has seen a significant increase in the number of recommendations for commutations for those facing life sentences while he has been in office. He has also stated that he is in agreement with the notion that Pennsylvania could empty its prisons by one-third without putting anyone's safety in jeopardy.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Breit Bart.
