A video clip resurfaced Monday showing Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman (D), who at the time of the clip was mayor of Braddock, vandalizing a sign belonging to a local business back in 2010.
The then-owner of Club 804, Assim Chaudhry, and someone who was interested in buying the club at the time, Cordell Collins, showed up to a local city council meeting with a laptop where they then played a video showing Fetterman vandalizing the sign, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in 2010.
Video showed Fetterman changing the sign from saying, “Opening Soon Under New Management” to “Closed Not Opening Soon.”
“This is the mayor,” Chaudhry said at the city council meeting. “This is who you guys have running this town.”
Fetterman didn’t hide the fact that he did it as he bragged about it to a local news station saying that vandalizing the sign was his way of putting the club on notice that he was going to try to shut them down.
Check out what @JohnFetterman did to a Black owned business. My lord. George Floyd would not approve. ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/MGDaQ9vodP
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) October 3, 2022
Democrats are hopeful that Fetterman will win his race against Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz and contribute to a majority in the evenly divided Senate. Amid criticism over his approach to drug policy, the longtime mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, apparently changed his campaign website.
As recently as last month, the website’s issues page discussed Fetterman’s commitment to Black Lives Matter — although the wording has since been removed. “John served as mayor of a city that’s more than 80% Black, and has championed the idea that Black lives matter since long before it became a hashtag,” an archived version of the website said under a section called “Black Lives Matter.”
Fetterman garnered controversy in 2013 after he responded to what he believed was gunfire by pulling a firearm on an African-American and detaining him until police arrived — an incident that has generated unease among black voters.
Fetterman also has a lengthy history of supporting controversial monitored drug injection sites and drug decriminalization. “I think it’s important that we as a society get in front of it,” Fetterman said of the drug crisis in a 2018 podcast interview with Aaron Watson. “I think it’s important that we as a society have all the options on the table — including needle exchange, which is only technically legal in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — and even safe injection sites that are being considered.”
