Pennsylvania’s second lady, Gisele Fetterman, came into the spotlight this week and took a central role in her husband’s campaign, Pennsylvania Senate Democrat nominee John Fetterman, after he suffered a stroke.
Gisele Feterman has long been present in the campaign, with her husband often quoting her former dreamer status when talking about immigration.
But to be in front and in the center of the main evening, when her husband could not present her to a much wider audience.
“Women can do anything,” Gisele Feterman said in an interview with The Hill on Friday, when asked what it’s like to be in the spotlight on the first night.
“John is used to always being strong in the relationship for our family, and it was my chance to step in and I wanted to make him proud, so it was easy to have to rise to that,” she said.
John Fetterman suffered a stroke Friday before the Pennsylvania primary and had a pacemaker implant procedure on election day. It was Gisele Feterman who remarked on her campaign party after he won the Democratic nomination for the Senate, spoke to the media and provided news about her husband.
The vice-governor attributes to his wife that she insisted that he seek medical help when he was not feeling well.
“I didn’t want to go – I didn’t think I should – but Giselle insisted, and as usual, she was right,” he said in a statement.
After her husband’s stroke, Gisele Feterman spoke about the importance of learning the warning signs of a stroke.
“This is a really important conversation,” she said.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Feterman came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant when she was 7 years old with her mother and brother. The family settled in Queens, New York, where her mother worked to clean houses and hotels. Feterman described his mother’s work in the United States as a “correction” after earning a doctorate. and manages hospitals in Brazil.
“This started our journey to this new country as new Americans,” she said.
Feterman later pursued a career in non-profit space, focusing on issues such as food insecurity, poverty and justice. She is the founder of Freestore 15104, a Braddock, Pennsylvania-based organization dedicated to redistributing donated and surplus goods to communities in need. She is also a co-founder of the non-profit organization For Good PGH and 412 Food Rescue.
“Access is really my passion,” she said. “We work to ensure that everyone has access to all the things they need.”
It was Feterman’s work in the non-profit space that led to her meeting with her husband.
“It’s a really romantic story. Are you ready? ”Fetherman exclaimed.
Fetherman was working in Newark as a nutritionist when he read about the work of the then mayor of Braddock, John Fetterman.
“I was inspired by the work he was doing and wrote a letter to the Braddock neighborhood sharing my work with justice and access to food,” she said. “The letters ended with John calling me and then planning a visit.”
“He came to visit after the call and then I arrived and he fell madly in love with me,” she said. She noticed that the bridges she had ridden, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, were made of Braddock steel.
“I felt it was a connection and a sign,” she said.
The couple married in 2008. Since becoming a lieutenant governor and second lady, the Fetermans have been seen as a team unit by Pennsylvania.
“You have two people who can literally attract crowds,” said TJ Rooney, a former chairman of the Democratic Party. “This is what you call a political blessing.”
Giselle and John Feterman talk about her story when she grew up as an undocumented immigrant. In 2020, the couple wrote a joint article in support of the Deferred Action on the Arrival of Children (DACA), an Obama-era program that protects immigrants who come to the United States as children from deportation. Most recently, the vice-governor quoted him in the wake of the campaign.
That same year, Gisele Feterman was the victim of a racist verbal attack in which a white woman threw racial insults at the second lady while queuing at a grocery store and later approached her in the parking lot. Feterman posted a video of the incident online.
The second lady told The Hill that the “compassionate approach” to immigration is just one of the topics her husband would focus on if elected to the Senate, also listing the termination of the filibuster, raising the minimum wage, legalizing of cannabis and solving climate problems.
John Fetterman is recovering well, his campaign spokesman Joe Calvelo told the Post-Gazette on Thursday, although he is not yet ready to return to the campaign.
Even after that, experts say Giselle Fetterman’s presence in the campaign is unlikely to lead anywhere before November.
“People already know her in the state,” said Kelly Dietmar, an assistant professor at the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. “It would make sense to use this landmark beyond his illness.”
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Asked if he would ever like to run for office, Feterman immediately threw water at the idea.
“I would never, never, ever want to be in politics,” Feterman said, laughing. “I like to have a back seat, I like to work non-profit.”
“I guess I will continue this work, I may have a slightly bigger platform for that, but as I run for anything, I promise you will never catch me there,” she said.
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