Pennsylvania senators meet in Boston for debate and essentially fail to disagree

Matthew Medsger, Boston Herald on Jun 2, 2025

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BOSTON — A pair of Pennsylvania lawmakers met in Boston on Monday for what was billed as a “vigorous” debate between opposing ideologies, but what actually occurred was the sort of bipartisan collegiality rarely seen in Washington politics at present.

U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and David McCormick, a Democrat and Republican both in their first terms representing the Keystone State in Congress’ upper chamber, struggled to find uncommon ground when they met in the Bay State for the sixth debate in a series of meetings dubbed “The Senate Project.”

Organized by partisan groups named for a pair of famously bipartisan late senators — the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate and the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation — Fetterman and McCormick’s debate was more akin to a pair of men sitting next to a fire and speaking over a glass of whiskey than the Oxford-style slobber knocker described ahead of time.

While both men at times admitted they had or would again in the future find themselves at odds politically, over the course of the about 30-minute back and forth both found plenty of reasons to agree.

The first question posed was over a recent FBI-designated “targeted act of terror” in Boulder, Colorado, where a flamethrower-wielding man who was apparently shouting invectives over Israel’s war in Gaza allegedly injured several people.

McCormick said violence like that requires people to stand with “complete moral clarity” and push back on a rising tide of antisemitic behavior.

“You know, this is something that I’m terribly worried about, the growth of antisemitism here in our country, and it is something I know Sen. Fetterman and I share,” he said.

Fetterman, clad in his trademark shorts-and-hoodie, was quick to agree. He said the whole Israel-Palestine conversation is one area where he has found hard pushback from both his party and his constituents.

“It’s astonishing, the kinds of rank antisemitism. It’s out of control,” the former Mayor of Braddock said.

Antisemitism is spreading through college campuses like a plague, Fetterman said, and into the mainstream of U.S. society. His staunch support of Israel, he said, hasn’t won him many friends among his party.

“I have people following me and screaming ‘free Palestine’ and and ‘genocide John’ — and that’s been now going on for 18 months — and now that’s a small, small thing. I can’t imagine how members of the Jewish community must feel constantly under assault,” he said.

On Iran, Fetterman went so far as to suggest that Donald Trump made the right call in pulling out of the “Iran nuclear deal” in 2018, again bucking the prevailing party narrative.

Fetterman was even quick to agree that the border must be secured in order to prevent mass migration into the U.S. Under Joe Biden, he said, a population the size of Pittsburgh was showing up at the border “every month — not once a year — every month.” Being pro-immigration, and in favor of a secure border are not contrary concepts, Fetterman said.

“That sometimes puts me at the odds of my party and my base to assume that I’ve changed my values and that’s never changed, that’s never changed,” he said.

When asked to discuss recent questions regarding his health, Fetterman said that McCormick was one of the first people to speak up for him amid a “weird smear” campaign.

“He actually asked me. It’s like, ‘is it okay to defend you? I don’t want that to create more political problems,’” Fetterman said.

McCormick quipped he hesitated to speak up for his Democratic colleague, because he “thought it might hurt him.”

The pair may not see eye-to-eye in a number of ways, McCormick said, but one thing was apparent about Fetterman from their first meetings.

“We have many disagreements but the thing we both agree on, I think, is that it’s an honor to serve Pennsylvania and we want to work together to do great things together whenever we can,” he said.

The meeting between McCormick and Fetterman follows past debates by South Carolina’s Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Vermont’s Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders as well as New Hampshire’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and her conservative colleague from Iowa, U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, among others.

Monday’s debate was live streamed on Fox Nation, and portions were scheduled to air that evening on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” from 6 to 7 p.m. Those who missed it or any past debate can visit thesenateproject.org to find recordings and more information about the debate series.

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