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Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate, will hold his first public rally next week since suffering a near-fatal stroke four days before the May 17 primary election, his campaign announced Friday.
The rally is planned for Erie, Pennsylvania, one of the state’s swing counties, on August 12. Fetterman has recently returned to in-person fundraising events and made a few brief public appearances, but nothing on the scale of what’s planned next week.
“Before the 2020 election, I said if I could know one fact about the results, I could tell you who would win Pennsylvania. Whoever wins Erie County will win Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said in a statement announcing the rally . “Erie County is the most important county in Pennsylvania. I’ve visited Erie dozens and dozens of times in the past, and I’m honored and proud to be back on the campaign trail here.”
Donald Trump won Erie County in 2016 and Joe Biden captured it in 2020.
Fetterman faces celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in the November election. Oz has remained active on the campaign trail since winning the Republican primary, though he has faced criticism for trips to Ireland and Palm Beach, Florida.
Despite his absence from the campaign trail, a recent poll showed Fetterman with the lead. Fetterman had an 11-point lead over Oz, 47% to 36%, in a Fox News poll released July 28. Three percent supported independent candidate Everett Stern and 13 percent supported someone else or were undecided.
In an interview late last month with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, his first media interview since his stroke, Fetterman said he felt ready to get back on the court.
“I might miss a word now and then in a conversation, or I might slur two words. I think that’s rare, though,” Fetterman said. “So I think we’re ready to run, and those are the only issues I have. That’s the absolute truth, 100 percent.”
Fetterman’s campaign office announced on May 15, two days before the primary, that he had suffered a stroke “caused by a clot in my heart being in an A-fiber rhythm for too long.” Doctors worked to “quickly and completely remove the clot, reversing the stroke, they also got my heart under control,” Fetterman said in the statement released by his campaign. Doctors placed a pacemaker with a defibrillator.
He told the Post-Gazette that he has “no physical limitations,” walks four to five miles every day in 90-degree heat, understands words correctly and hasn’t lost any of his memory. He said he works with a speech therapist and sometimes has trouble hearing.
The race to fill the seat held by retiring Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R) is considered one of the most competitive in the country and will help determine majority control of the Senate.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s campaign arm, has mocked Fetterman with a countdown of his days off the trail and a picture of him with the words “Have you seen this person?”
He sent out another release hours before Fetterman’s campaign announcement, saying, “Another Friday without Fetterman.”