Election 2020

Let John and Gisele Fetterman Restore Your Faith in American Democracy

Meet Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor and second lady. He's 6'8". She goes by SLOP.
John and Gisele Fetterman
Laura Petrilla

If Halloween had fallen a week after Election Day instead of a week before, there would be three clear costumes to emerge from 2020’s voting zeitgeist: Steve Kornacki’s khakis, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and the very specific look of Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman.

Fetterman—all 6'8" of him swathed in Carhartt—cut an eye-catching figure on national television last week as the country turned its gaze toward the Keystone State’s vote-counting process and soon-to-be-ex-President Donald Trump focused his voter-fraud conspiracy theories on Philadelphia. Fetterman told Rachel Maddow that “the only [voting] irregularity we had was the president’s campaign rolling up in a clown car in downtown Philadelphia,” before heading over to the Today show, where he said that Trump and his legal team were welcome to “sue a ham sandwich.”

Vulture called him “a delightful, hilarious, and informative presence during the chaos of all this election coverage,” and Slate declared, “If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of joining the cult of Fetterman, get ready, because you’re about to.” But Fetterman is more than just a one-man quote machine, and he’s not the only Fetterman with a striking look, progressive politics, and a lively social media presence; his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, or as she calls herself in her Twitter and Instagram bios, SLOP—which she prefers to the full title, second lady of Pennsylvania—is as worthy of cult leadership as is her husband.

We talked to the Fettermans about their big week in the national spotlight, their brand of progressive politics, and how Bravo’s Below Deck might be the healing balm this country needs.

Glamour: John, you’ve really captured the attention of the nation in the past week. What has that been like?

John Fetterman: Well, I would strenuously disagree with that! I’m really dull...

Gisele Fetterman: So dull! So, so dull. [Laughs.]

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JF: Well, I was kind of an outlier in terms of warning people about how tough this election was going to be. I think the high-water mark for me was when The Economist gave Joe Biden a 93% chance of winning Pennsylvania. I’m like, “There’s no way!” And then when we started seeing it unfold, when it became abundantly clear that the president’s agenda was to foment as much chaos as possible, to smear the election and the election results, which were conducted with the utmost transparency and professionalism, it became important to me to sound that alarm, and it just flowed from there.

You won your first election by one vote—is it fair to say that accurate vote counts are deeply important to you?

JF: I wouldn’t have a political career if it wasn’t for one single provisional ballot. I don’t say this as a Democrat—I say this as a father of three young children and as a citizen of Pennsylvania: Everyone gets that some of politics is like professional wrestling, like a poke to the eyes or a clothesline, but this? This is a whole different level. This is throwing acid on the very fabric of our democracy, of peaceful transition of power, of election integrity. And when you’ve got zero [evidence] to back you up, you should not be allowed to continue to say those things. At what point does saying fraud about our American democratic system constitute yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater?

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You have an interesting backstory and path to politics.

JF: I came to Braddock to start a GED program, and I loved working with young people so I stayed. Then two of my students were killed by gun violence, and that’s when I decided to run. As a program manager, I was helping these kids get jobs and driver licenses and GEDs, but I couldn’t help or make any changes in regards to gun violence.

Gisele, you also have an interesting backstory.

GF: I was raised by a single mom. I was born in Brazil, and I was loved. I was surrounded by family—cousins, my grandma. My mom had a Ph.D. and ran hospitals. We had a comfortable living financially, and we were stable. But our city was very violent, and my mom said that her fear was that she would one day see my brother or I thinking that violence was okay and being accepting of it.

I was almost eight when we left, and I remember packing. You know, I had to pack my entire life into a suitcase and, at that age, I think everything is really important to you. We arrived in New York, and my mom is now working as a domestic worker—she’s cleaning hotels and houses, and this began a 15-year journey of living in the shadows as an undocumented family in New York.

JF: I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and in a different generation. It’s very illuminating to have had someone that was born in a different culture, a different country, who’s younger enough than me to see things in a different perspective. I think we complement each other in that way.

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You have three children. How are they responding to your new national profile?

GF: Karl is 11, and he is the most mature, like he probably has a 401k and future plans lined up. Grace is nine and she’s really funny, and sarcastic, and dark, and a really fun personality. My youngest [August] is six, and he’s a wild child, very loving and very sweet.

To them, life isn’t that different! We’ve kind of been cooped together for a bit now with COVID, so for them, if anything, it’s just kind of annoying that they’ve had to be a little quieter than usual in the house while we’re in the middle of nonstop interviews.

We’ve done a lot of bribing, like, for quiet time.

You also emphasize conservation, thrift, and repurposing; there’s your home, which is a converted car dealership, Gisele’s emphasis on thrifted clothing, and her work with 412 Food Rescue.

GF: Growing up as a young immigrant, we were dumpster divers. All the furniture in my home came from the curb in New York; we lived in Queens, but we would see which neighborhood was better, you know, which had the good stuff. And that’s where we’d go! So we would regularly change our couches, our desks, our dressers. We were all always upgrading, and these were items that would have gone to a landfill but instead they went to a family who had no furniture at home, so now I look at what other things could be solved with what’s already here. I think in every community, there are folks that have too much of something and too little of something. And we have the opportunity to change that.

You both have lively social media presences—how would you describe your use of social media?

JF: I feel cheesy using this term, but it’s authentic. I mean, it’s almost antithetical to refer to yourself as authentic, but what I will say is that every tweet is from me; it’s not managed by a staff. There’s no filter. And I think it’s a privilege, you know—like there are a lot of drawbacks to social media, but it’s a privilege to be able to communicate and interact directly with people with no filter.

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GF: We’re like a hammer on things we really care about, whether that’s criminal justice reform, whether that’s looking at legislation, whether that’s sharing stories—it all goes toward normalizing these conversations that are really important. And it can help change the conversation on a bigger scale. A couple months ago I came across a sticker on a car that was a map of America and it said “Fuck off, we’re full.” I researched who made the sticker, and it was Amazon. So I kind of blasted them nicely to say, “You should be using your platform differently, please reconsider.” Amazon immediately apologized and had them pulled. We believe there’s a way to do it in a way that that creates a conversation, and that you can hold someone’s feet to the fire without being mean.

What do you see as your next steps? What issues and initiatives are on your agenda for the next month, the next year, and beyond?

JF: I honestly wish we could shut social media down for a month in America and see what that does, because I think that is just an accelerant on a fire that we could do without right now. I think it really needs to be brought home that there’s almost always a person on the other side or other end of that tweet or that Facebook post. The idea of kindness.

And I really want to get back on the same page where the coronavirus is the enemy and not the other person. That’s one of the most destructive legacies of the Trump presidency, that he’s really convinced us that the other side is the enemy, instead of the coronavirus.

I would also make common sense reforms that shouldn’t be so difficult. Like, for God’s sake, Florida voted for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Florida! A straight Republican state! And yet in my state, we can’t get them to move off the dime. How’s that possible?!? There’s so many things like that—like, no one’s trying to take your hunting rifle or something for self-protection, but we don’t need AK-47s and full metal jackets to deer hunt and to protect your home. These basic things that most people want or agree with, but haven’t happened because of an agenda outside of “What is the greater good?” If we could just round some of the sharp edges that we have in American society, you know, square that circle—that’s what I would do.

You two seem tailor-made for reality TV—like a deeply cool Chip and Joanna Gaines—and you mentioned that you’re Bravo fans. What shows do you watch? And would you ever consider letting TV cameras into your home?

JF: If you want to see a boring big man on the couch at 9 p.m., sure. [Laughs.] I can nerd out on the difference between [Below Deck] Sailing Yacht and Mediterranean. It’s a secret shame of mine, for sure. My counterpart that ran in 2018 on the Republican side, we became friends and we both—and our wives—we watch it, and it’s like our secret shame together. We talk about episodes.

So maybe it’s Bravo that will bridge the gap between the two sides?

JF: I don’t know, but I am taking a political risk by admitting that I enjoy Below Deck Med!

Jolie Kerr is a writer whose work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, and GQ. Follow her on Twitter @joliekerr.