HARRISBURG, Pa. - One candidate is unabashedly blunt, willing to embrace progressive positions, doing little to build rapport with party leaders and dominating rooms with a 6-foot-8-inch frame.
The other crafts a more moderate image, a deliberate public speaker who became a congressional aide out of college and has carefully cultivated relationships within the party ever since.In both style and substance, John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro strike dramatically different profiles.Yet their fate — and that of the Democratic Party — is intertwined in a pair of Pennsylvania elections that will be among the most closely watched in the U.S.Fetterman offers Democrats their clearest path to picking up a U.S.
Senate seat, which could go a long way in helping the party keep control of the chamber.Shapiro, meanwhile, poses even larger existential questions as he faces a Republican rival for governor who has embraced conspiracies about the last presidential election and would have significant influence over running the next one in the premier battleground state."The stakes have never been higher, the contrast has never been clearer," Shapiro told state Democratic Party committee members at their Saturday meeting in Gettysburg. "This commonwealth has the power to decide whether we have the 51st senator.