Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the self-proclaimed champion of working-class voters who has become alienated from his own party and fed up with his job, on Wednesday appeared in a short video on the opening night of President Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas.
“Yes, I’m a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today?” Mr. Fetterman said in a video filmed in front of a U.S. steel mill in Pennsylvania. He introduced himself as a “common-sense Democrat” who he said “is “always going to reject the extremes in socialism.”
Mr. Fetterman introduced Senator David McCormick, Republican of Pennsylvania, and said that they would work together “and work with President Trump and defend the steel way of life.”
The appearance of a Democrat at a convention boosting the G.O.P., at a time when his party is claiming that they have made life harder and more expensive for Americans, was a boon for Mr. Trump, coming just weeks before crucial midterm elections in which Republicans are battling to defend their slim congressional majorities.
And it was a small setback for Democrats’ efforts to focus the final crucial weeks of the midterm campaign on the president, whose approval ratings are sagging, and his unpopular policies.
It also came amid speculation that Mr. Fetterman could in the future switch parties, a move he has said he would “never” make but has appeared more likely as his breaks with his own party have become more frequent and bitter.
His decision to take part in Mr. Trump’s convention, reported earlier by Axios, appeared designed for maximum shock value and served as a boost for Republicans’ otherwise lackluster gathering, which many of their most vulnerable incumbents and candidates have opted to skip as they work to gain some distance from an unpopular president.
Mr. Trump featured Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey at the Republican Party’s 2020 and 2024 national conventions. Mr. Van Drew had been a Democrat until Mr. Trump convinced him to switch parties.
At the height of Mr. Fetterman’s popularity with Democrats, he briefly harbored aspirations to run for president in 2028, according to former aides. Instead, frustrated with his own party and his standing within it, and aware of the attention he garners for criticizing it, he has sought allies on the other side of the political aisle.
In recent months, Mr. Fetterman has been amping up his flirtations with Republicans, while still vowing that he would never actually switch parties. In July, he set up an unusual joint fund-raising committee with Senator David McCormick, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, with whom he has established a close, personal bond. And he has said that if his party officially turned against Israel, as some of its most progressive voices are urging, it would be the “red line” that would force him to leave.
But he has also been adamant that despite his disagreements with Democrats and his antipathy to party gatherings and caucus meetings, he had less in common with Republicans. In an interview in July, he told The New York Times he would “never” leave the party.
“I’m not being cute,” he said then. “I vote 90-something percent with Democrats.”
About 69 percent of likely Democratic voters in Pennsylvania view Mr. Fetterman negatively, according to a poll conducted last month by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena University. Most Republicans in his state, however, now hold a positive view of Mr. Fetterman, who has become a fixture on conservative news outlets bashing the policies of his own party.
The progressive Working Families Party announced last year it would recruit and support a primary opponent to challenge him in 2028.
As Mr. Fetterman has evolved into a lawmaker who barely resembles the man he presented to voters on the campaign trail in 2022 — a champion of the underdog who highlighted his ties to Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont — his legions of former staff members have grown increasingly incensed and vocal about how they believe he is abdicating his responsibilities.
A group of his disillusioned former staff members last week threatened to begin revealing private communications from Mr. Fetterman in which he expresses disdain for the day-to-day duties of being a senator representing 13 million constituents. The former staff members, who made their announcement with an anonymous account on X, said the first “drop” of internal communications that would expose Mr. Fetterman were set to begin on Monday, when the Senate returned from its break.
Mr. Fetterman was elected in 2022, after he had a life-threatening stroke in the middle of the most competitive Senate race in the country.
Shortly after being sworn in, he checked himself in to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to be treated for depression for six weeks, and appeared to make a remarkable recovery as he began speaking out about the importance of getting help when needed. But then in 2024, he began retreating from the job, rarely attending committee meetings, casting votes or holding town halls.
He has since expressed remorse for speaking openly about his mental health and claimed that the criticism he gets for missing votes and committee hearings is because of it.
“My doctor warned years ago: After it’s public that you are getting help for depression, people will weaponize that,” Mr. Fetterman told The New York Times in an interview last year. “Simple things are turned. That’s exactly what happened.”
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