John Fetterman was angry.
The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania was readying to speak at a disaster response press conference in Bucks County on July 16, 2023, just hours after flooding in Upper Makefield that ultimately killed seven people. Local officials spoke for a few minutes to offer an initial update for the assembled press. Then, Gov. Josh Shapiro provided information on what his administration was doing to respond to the emergency.
After a few minutes, Shapiro tossed the microphone back to the local responders — not Fetterman. Moments later, the event wrapped without Fetterman ever speaking.
Already deeply skeptical of Shapiro, Fetterman swore off appearing at events alongside the governor going forward, as three sources familiar with the incident told NBC News.
Fetterman went “through four or five rounds of prep on the run of show for that,” one source said. “And [Shapiro] just sidestepped it completely. After that, John [said]: ‘If there’s an event where he’s going to be there, I don’t want to do it.’”
A person familiar with the event said the idea Shapiro intentionally sidestepped Fetterman was "inaccurate."
"When it came to providing updates in the face of this emergency, local officials were leading the response and determined the run of show," this person said.
The episode highlighted what has become an increasingly volatile relationship between Pennsylvania’s two most ambitious elected officials. It’s a Democratic Party rivalry that is suddenly spilling out into full view and has the potential to shape state politics — and maybe even the national political scene — for years to come.
Earlier this month, as Vice President Kamala Harris was wrapping up her search for a running mate and was considering Shapiro among her final choices, Politico reported that Fetterman aides told Harris’ team the senator had concerns about Shapiro. Days later, Fetterman sat stone-faced with his arms crossed as Shapiro delivered a rousing speech at the Philadelphia rally where Harris introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her No. 2. Seated among a delegation of Pennsylvania politicians right in front of the press section, the 6-foot-8 Fetterman stood out as a lone member who did not join in the clapping and cheering for Shapiro.
“For most PA politicos, it’s pretty well known that the two clashed,” one Pennsylvania Democrat said. “It was obvious that those two were always on the collision course and the only thing that kept them apart was that they were going for different types of offices.”
“It almost feels like our dirty laundry is being let out to air,” this person added.
The news conference incident last year is also not the first example of Fetterman withdrawing from events with other officials over a perceived slight, according to two people with direct knowledge of another episode. In the early days of the pandemic, Fetterman, then Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, participated in a daily staff call with top officials in then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration. After days of raising criticisms about how Wolf’s staff was handling state-controlled liquor stores and flagging tweets suggesting the administration was falling short in its coronavirus response, Wolf told Fetterman to essentially chill out. Fetterman stopped appearing on the calls afterward, both people said.
NBC News spoke with 12 people familiar with the Fetterman-Shapiro relationship from different perspectives, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive matter featuring two powerful figures. In Pennsylvania, no two elected officials have seen their fortunes improve or their national prominence grow more in the Donald Trump era, rising from a county commission and a small-town mayorship on opposite sides of the state to become the commonwealth’s most recognizable political heavyweights, just as Pennsylvania has become the biggest swing state on the map.
'Like oil and water'
Both are seen to harbor future presidential ambitions, while carving out unique paths to the top of the state’s pecking order. For Fetterman, he ran a failed 2016 Senate bid as an acolyte of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., garnering national attention for his persona and appearance, before winning a campaign for lieutenant governor championing marijuana legalization and criminal justice reform and then capturing a Senate seat in 2022 after a campaign in which he suffered a stroke and was off the trail for months.
Shapiro’s rise was more methodical, serving as a congressional staffer, state representative, county commissioner and state attorney general before winning the governorship. Along the way, he outran other Democrats who shared the ballot with him and generated headlines for battling Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Pennsylvania and for his probe of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
“It’s like oil and water,” a person familiar with the relationship said. “They are very different people. Western PA versus Eastern PA. Buttoned-up and slick versus hoodies and I shoot the s--- whenever I want to.”
Fetterman and his allies have pointed to a dispute when both served on the state’s Board of Pardons as the origin of their falling-out. As lieutenant governor, Fetterman’s role on the board was one of the biggest parts of his job, and he viewed his work there as some of the most important in his career. He and Shapiro, who was state AG at the time, differed on some pardon recommendations, and at one point, Fetterman made what was seen as a threat to run against Shapiro for governor in 2022.
Wolf, who led the state at the time, had to intervene in the dispute after Fetterman “kind of forced a meeting,” a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. This person said that Shapiro felt he had incomplete information on the cases Fetterman wanted him to support and that Fetterman pressed repeatedly for the pardons to be approved.
Multiple people said the feud appears to be much more about Fetterman training his ire at Shapiro than the other way around, particularly as the senator has taken public steps — like sitting while Shapiro spoke at the rally and talking about their dispute on the state pardons board — to express his displeasure while Shapiro has not. Two unconnected Pennsylvania Democrats separately compared the ordeal to a popular meme from the hit TV show “Mad Men,” in which one person standing in an elevator criticizes Don Draper, the series’ main character, who responds, “I don’t think about you at all.”
