Democrats need four Senate seats to retake the majority
President Donald Trump on Saturday openly encouraged Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania to leave the Democratic Party and become a Republican, telling reporters at Joint Base Andrews, “I’d love to see him as a Republican. He does better as a Republican than he does as a Democrat.”
Trump spoke as he returned to Washington from a rally in Tennessee. The remarks came weeks before midterm elections that could reshape control of Congress, and The Guardian described them as among the most direct overtures Trump has made to woo Fetterman into the Republican Party — a matter of growing importance as the GOP could lose its Senate majority in November. A representative for Fetterman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fetterman was a Democratic star when he was first elected to the Senate in 2022, drawing on what The Guardian called his “everyman appeal.” During his time in Washington, he has split with Democrats on issues ranging from immigration to Israel, leading to speculation that he might switch parties.
Fetterman has repeatedly rejected the notion of becoming a Republican. Writing in the Washington Post in May, he said he would be a “terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.”
His relationship with fellow Democrats has grown more tenuous since he recorded a video for the Republican midterm convention in September, in which he praised his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Republican Dave McCormick, and suggested there were extremists in his own party. “I’m always going to stand with America,” Fetterman said in the video. “I’m always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life.”
Also in September, Fetterman described himself seemingly inadvertently as a “lifelong Republican” during a fireside chat at the Texas Tribune festival in Austin.
Those flirtations with the Republican Party — separate from the Austin slip of the tongue — could make it extremely difficult for Fetterman to win the Democratic nomination for another Senate term, The Guardian reported. Trump raised that prospect on Saturday as he encouraged the party switch.
Democrats need to pick up four seats to retake the Senate majority, a once-remote prospect that remains challenging for the party. Trump’s unpopularity and the economic fallout from the Iran war have intensified headwinds for the Republican Party, making Democrats more bullish about a path to Senate control, according to The Guardian.
A Democratic pickup of four seats would produce a 51-seat majority, which could put Fetterman in an influential position and reduce the incentive to switch parties.
The last Senate party switch to affect control of the chamber came in 2001, when Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the GOP to give Democrats a narrow majority. Former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter’s decision to abandon Republicans in 2009 helped Democrats achieve a supermajority.