Pa. Sen. Katie Muth read a letter from a former homeless man on the Senate floor last week — now she’s gone viral

HARRISBURG — Democratic State Sen. Katie Muth was having dinner with her husband Sunday night when she saw the tweet.

“Keep persisting, @SenatorMuth,” wrote Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Warren, like thousands of others, had viewed and shared a video on social media of Muth on the Senate floor from last Wednesday. The video has exploded online, giving the freshman senator from Montgomery County instant internet fame. On Monday, it landed her an invitation to appear on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews and a shout-out from yet another Democratic presidential contender, California Sen. Kamala Harris.

In the video, Muth stands at a lectern reading a letter from a former homeless man pleading to save a cash-assistance program for the poorest Pennsylvanians that the Republican-controlled legislature was cutting in the state budget.

For 3½ tense minutes, as Muth reads the letter, Republican Majority Leader Jake Corman — surrounded by male colleagues and staffers — angrily yells in an attempt to get her to stop. Under Senate rules, Corman has the right to interrupt another senator, and he and other Republicans were furious that Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, was refusing to recognize him.

On Friday, the video was noticed and shared on Twitter by NowThis, which has 2.3 million followers and describes itself as sharing “stories that move.” Items highlighted on its page often are quickly shared around the country.

The video of Muth and Corman had been viewed more than 3.5 million times and retweeted 3,600 times as of Monday afternoon. (Tweets by President Donald Trump, who has 61.5 million followers, often get retweeted tens of thousands of times.)

Muth, who has the reputation of not caring what other people say or think about her, has received hundreds of pledges of campaign support from all over the country, all unsolicited by her.

The NowThis tweet includes subtitles for both Muth and Corman’s words, juxtaposing her reading of the letter with Corman’s shouting at Fetterman, who presides over the Senate. Corman yells at Fetterman to “Do your job,” and at one point hollers at him to stop acting like “a partisan hack.”

“State @SenatorMuth refused to stop reading a letter from a man who experienced homelessness even though her male colleague tried to shout her down for minutes on end,” the NowThis tweet read.

The backlash was instant.

“Some reptilian-minded men still think that a deep or stronger voice gives them strength or power,” one woman responded.

“This never would’ve happened had she been a man,” another woman wrote. “The outright disrespect. And not one MAN stepped up to stop it. Shameful.”

Then came the tweet from Warren on Sunday night. Warren’s tweet has been liked by 30,000 people and shared 4,300 times.

Jennifer Kocher, a spokesperson for Corman, said Corman’s actions that day on the Senate floor have been mischaracterized. Corman, she said, was not screaming at a female colleague, but was trying to get Fetterman to follow the Senate’s rules so that normal debate could occur.

“When the rules are not followed, chaos rules,” Kocher said. “If the rules of the Senate had been followed, that scene would not have occurred. We would have had our disagreement in a respectful manner.”

Fetterman has acknowledged that he knew he was circumventing the Senate’s rules to allow Muth to speak:

In an interview Monday, Muth said the unexpected attention was welcome — not for her, she said, but for the cause of reviving a program she believes is a lifeline for the poorest Pennsylvanians.

“The upside of having this out there is that it increases awareness about what’s voted on in Harrisburg,” she said, adding: “We have to fight the good fight every time, even if we lose.”