John Fetterman shunned local government as the mayor trying to revive crumbling Braddock

BRADDOCK, Pa. — The website promoting this gutted steel town in the spring of 2006 presented stark black-and-white photos of dilapidated housing, aging landmarks and brick facades marred with angry graffiti. The man promising change, Mayor John Fetterman, stood tall in front of a run-down building, arms crossed.

"DESTRUCTION BREEDS CREATION," read the caption. "CREATE AMIDST DESTRUCTION."

The edgy campaign — which the newly elected mayor reportedly paid for himself without consulting the borough council — was an early sign of the unorthodox, go-it-alone strategy he would deploy to contend with a local government he viewed as inept.

Fetterman largely quit going to council meetings altogether. He began effectively using his nonprofit, Braddock Redux — bankrolled in part by his family — as his own shadow government to try to implement his vision of a revitalized Rust Belt community of artists and other urban homesteaders. Over Fetterman's 13-year tenure as mayor, the private group helped launch a "Free Store" that gives away donated goods, affordable housing for artists and a youth-oriented community center. Many residents of the majority Black town of 1,700 embraced Fetterman; he was reelected three times. And his nonprofit work helped foster the folk-hero narrative that later propelled him to lieutenant governor and now, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

But some in Braddock viewed the white mayor working through a nonprofit with an all-white board as circumventing public debate and input from the town’s democratically elected representatives. Instead of trying to reform what he saw as a broken government, Fetterman worked around it.

"You've got to learn how to work with people who don't like you," said Chardaé Jones, a Braddock native who was appointed by the council to succeed Fetterman as interim mayor in 2019 when he became lieutenant governor. "That's part of being in government."

Some longtime residents also question his efforts to impose what they saw as a hipster sensibility by luring trendy businesses, including an upscale restaurant and a brewery, while also trying to shut down a longtime nightclub.

"People of color don't drink IPA," said longtime Braddock resident Mary Carey, 53, referring to the brewery's flagship ale. Many Black residents saw the nightclub as a neighborhood hangout, Carey said, while the restaurant closed after a few years. "You still have to have places where people can go who live in the neighborhood."

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This account of the unusual private charity at the center of Fetterman's record as mayor is based on a Washington Post examination of tax returns and other records and interviews with more than a dozen residents and current and former city officials.

The nonprofit offers a window into his mixed legacy in Braddock, one of the poorest communities in the state, where some of his signature projects are struggling to sustain funding.

His role as president of a nonprofit enabled him to exercise power and spend money in a way he could not as the mayor of a tiny, financially strapped borough whose only official duties were to oversee police and cast tiebreaking council votes. To supporters, that's exactly the kind of outsider mentality that Washington lacks.

"He used the nonprofit and his personal brand to push things forward," said Tina Doose, whose 16 years on the council overlapped with Fetterman's tenure. "He elevated the role of mayor which made some people furious because it was not traditional or typical. He was OK with that, with people being against him."

As the leader of Braddock Redux, Fetterman could make decisions privately with two or three fellow board members instead of hashing issues out at public meetings. Fetterman also is not required to publicly disclose the donors who have contributed more than $6.5 million to Braddock Redux between 2007 and 2020. Fetterman's campaign declined to offer a detailed accounting of donors to the group, which has faced cost overruns and tax liens, and since his departure in 2018, steep declines in fund-raising.

Fetterman and other board members never took salaries from the volunteer-run nonprofit, tax filings show. He has acknowledged his family's support while earning about $150 per month as mayor in his 30s and 40s — an arrangement featured in attack ads from his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, who has cast the goateed, tattooed Fetterman as a phony populist.

Fetterman’s Senate campaign declined to make him available to talk to The Post for this story. His wife, Gisele, said in a recent interview that he had no plans to run for political office when he arrived in Braddock two decades ago. Rather than deploying his family resources to turn a profit, allies said, he plowed them into the nonprofit and the community.

"You have an entirely volunteer organization that did immense good in town," said Gisele, who runs the Free Store. "Anything good happening in town for a really long time was led by Braddock Redux."

Nine miles east of Pittsburgh, Braddock was once a bustling town, where famed industrialist Andrew Carnegie built a massive steel plant and his first public library. The population swelled to 20,000 people in the 1920s. Braddock Avenue was abuzz with restaurants, movie theaters, furniture and clothing stores. But the decline of America's steel industry in recent decades stripped away Braddock's lifeblood. Today only around 1,700 people remain, of which about 72 percent are Black. About one-third live below the federal poverty threshold.

Fetterman grew up in suburban York County, more than 200 miles east of Braddock, in what he once called "this kind of comfortable, conservative York bubble." He arrived in Braddock in 2001, trailing master's degrees in business administration and public policy. Shaken by the death of a close friend and a relationship with an AIDS-orphaned child through the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization, the Harvard graduate had walked away from a career in the insurance business.

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“I think you can best determine what your values are by where you chose to spend your life and your career,” Fetterman, 53, said during an interview earlier this month with the PennLive editorial board. “Twenty-one years ago I came to Braddock, which is an overwhelmingly majority Black community that was abandoned and forgotten and I chose to run a GED program. There’s no money there, there’s no glamour there, it was a commitment to make sure these people had the opportunity to get their education back on track.”

Fetterman ran for mayor in 2005. His young mentees plastered "JKF" stickers all around town — Karl is his middle name — and the vote was a squeaker: a 149 to 148 victory for Fetterman. It wasn't a mandate, and the borough council was wary of Fetterman's grand plans. For his part, Fetterman quickly concluded local government was a dead end.

"If there was a dream team of holding everything collectively back, you couldn't assemble a finer group," Fetterman told Pittsburgh City Paper months after his election. "I mean, if your mission was to stifle any kind of creative energy or idea …"

Several council members Fetterman served with have died, while others declined interview requests or couldn't be reached. In an 2015 interview with the PennLive website before his death, former council president Jesse Brown said Fetterman didn't seem to understand the mayor's limited powers in a borough predominantly controlled by the council.

"He first come in thinking that he was in charge of everything," Brown said. "After a couple run-ins him and I had, he stopped coming to meetings. He should have been in all council meetings to break a tie in case there was a tie or if he had some input he could put input in, but he didn't do that."

Doose, though, said she didn't blame Fetterman for skipping most meetings. "He could have argued with them until he was blue in the face," she said. "It was not a productive environment."

Incompetence and corruption also plagued the town government in those years. Two months after Fetterman became mayor, the council sued the elected tax collector for failing to turn over records of unpaid property taxes. In 2011, the borough manager pleaded guilty to stealing about $170,000 from the town. The borough's financial activities also were constrained by a state oversight program for poor communities.

So the new mayor turned to Braddock Redux, which he had started with his family’s money in 2003. The nonprofit spent $50,000 that year to buy a century-old, red-brick-church in Braddock, which Fetterman envisioned becoming a vibrant community hub with recreational and educational programs for kids and young adults.

Over the next few years, Fetterman’s efforts as mayor to draw attention and money to the blighted town drew outsize attention — from Rolling Stone magazine to “The Colbert Report.” The buzz attracted Levi Strauss & Co., which saw the gritty community as the ideal setting for its “Ready to Work” advertising campaign. Fetterman insisted on locals starring in the ad — and on a generous donation to his nonprofit.

Levi Strauss & Co. contributed $948,001 to Braddock Redux between 2010 and 2012 to support the renovation of the community center and a vacant, weedy lot into a vegetable farm, according to a company spokesperson. Doose said the tiny borough did not have the capacity to handle those projects.

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But as Braddock Redux drew in more funding and tackled more ambitious projects, some in town chafed at the hard-charging mayor who built a national profile highlighting the town's despair.

“He needs to tone down his rhetoric about the community and the bad shape the community is in and the devastation of the housing,” Brown, the former council president, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2009. “If he feels that the community is bankrupt, then he needs to go somewhere where he’d like it.”

A review of 14 years of the nonprofit's tax filings shows that revenue increased during the years that Levi Strauss & Co contributed, but other sources of money are difficult to verify because the IRS does not require tax-exempt organizations to publicly disclose donors.

It's unclear how much money Fetterman's parents invested in the nonprofit over the last two decades. Fetterman has said he used family money when Braddock Redux bought the church that was later converted into the community center. Tax filings say the nonprofit received a loan from a "related party" in 2003 that was paid off in 2015.

Tax records also show Braddock Redux received about $245,000 between 2007 and 2013 from “disqualified persons,” a classification that includes relatives of board members, but Fetterman’s campaign said it could not confirm all of that money came from his family. Fetterman’s father also donated about $18,000 in insurance coverage from his firm between 2011 and 2017, tax filings show.

Fetterman's father, Karl, said in a telephone interview that he couldn't recall exactly how much he had donated to Braddock Redux. "Whatever support I provided was to make it possible for him to do this, and I really admired what he was doing," he said.

The Post requested that the campaign disclose the amounts given by Fetterman's family and other top contributors in light of his role as a public official. The campaign cited two philanthropic groups that donated, Heinz Endowments and the Pittsburgh Foundation, and emphasized that Fetterman's family provided only a small percentage of the nonprofit's revenue after 2007.

The nonprofit's resources have declined since Fetterman left the board in 2018 when he became lieutenant governor. Revenue has fallen from a high of about $1.5 million in 2018 to about $56,000 in 2020, according to tax filings.

The three current board members of Braddock Redux declined or did not respond to requests for interviews from The Post. The treasurer, Tonya Markiewicz, answered some questions about the nonprofit's finances via email and said the money from Levi Strauss & Co. a decade ago represented its single largest donation. "We have always had to put in the work to receive grants, and we are continuing to fundraise for other projects like the completion of the community center renovation," she said.

The nonprofit spent more money than it received in six of the last eight years. The 2020 tax filing, the most recent available, shows expenses exceeded revenue that year by $104,633. Marc Owens, the former director of the tax-exempt division of the IRS, who reviewed the group's tax returns at the request of The Post, said its struggle to keep up with expenses is not unusual in the nonprofit world.

Braddock Redux and Fetterman also faced dozens of property tax liens from the county and local school district totaling about $32,000 between 2005 and 2016, public records show. Nearly all of the liens have been paid off. "That was a mistake, that was a clerical error," Fetterman said of the tax liens in a 2016 interview featured in an Oz attack ad.

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In this economically hollowed out corner of the Rust Belt, it's not unusual for local governments trying to boost the quality of life for residents to turn to nonprofits, experts said. In Allegheny County, Braddock is among 128 municipalities, some of which are small fiefdoms with shrinking tax bases that can't cover basic services.

"This is considered the most fragmented local government structure of any region in the United States,'' said Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research. "Many local governments are so small or distressed that they don't have the fiscal capacity that is common elsewhere. The result of that is that you see a large role for nongovernmental organizations attempting to fill the void."

The Nyia Page Community Center, which opened about a decade ago, is named after a 23-month-old child murdered by her father in Braddock in 2007. The center houses the Braddock Youth Project, a community service and job training program for teens.

Jones, the former mayor, said activities and events at the center have declined since Fetterman left the board. "It's kind of heartbreaking," said Jones, who once praised Fetterman's record but has since become a vocal critic.

The community center is a microcosm of the nonprofit's legacy in Braddock — widely admired but struggling to enact meaningful, long-lasting change.

The space can't be used for event rentals again until the nonprofit raises more money for necessary repairs and upgrades, said Markiewicz, the treasurer. She said Braddock Redux also is looking for tenants who could use parts of the building before the next phase of renovations. "Renting the building for events and attracting additional tenants will enable the building to be more financially self-sustaining," she said in an email.

A discreet door in the center leads down a flight of stairs to a cramped, bright orange kitchen and a few tables and chairs. This is Aunt Cheryl's "food from the heart" Cafe, where the smell of fried fish fills the air and the mini sweet potato pies sell out almost every day.

Braddock Redux has offered the space rent-free to cafe owner Cheryl Johnson since 2016.

"It's a dying community, forgotten, and he put some adrenaline in it," Johnson said of Fetterman. "Did he change everything in this town? No. Did he make a difference? Absolutely he did."

Walking down the main avenue in Braddock, most buildings are in disrepair, marred by peeling paint, rotted wood and broken glass. Ferty's Bar, which has closed, has a faded newspaper article in the window: "Braddock upgrades its look." The faux brick facade is peeling off. The roof has collapsed, and the interior is a mess of splintered wood and debris.

Fetterman still lives in Braddock with his wife, Gisele, and their three children in an abandoned Chevy dealership they converted into a massive loft overlooking the steel mill. When Fetterman was elected lieutenant governor, they opted not to move into the state-owned mansion in Harrisburg. Gisele said if her husband wins this election, the family would remain in Braddock.

Since 2012, she has run the Free Store, which gives away all sorts of donations out of a large shipping container painted blue. “They’re consistent, they didn’t walk out after 10 years,” observed Free Store volunteer Ann Brooks.

A few blocks away, an eight-story, former furniture store that closed in the 1970s has been converted into 37 affordable apartments for artists. Braddock Redux bought the building for $21,500 and later sold it to a group of investors led by developer Gregg Kander for $65,000 in 2019.

"It never would have happened without John," Kander said of the project to refurbish the tallest building in town, flipping through before and after pictures on his phone.

Not everything spearheaded by Fetterman succeeded. He lured a celebrity chef to open a restaurant in a building he owned in 2017. Superior Motors won raves in Food & Wine and the New York Times. The menu included beef tartare and sashimi appetizers, while entrees ran in price from $22 to $29.

Kander, who helped raised money for the restaurant, said it offered 50 percent discount to residents and was intended to lure outsiders to Braddock and employ locals. Braddock Redux received grants for a communal oven and culinary classes. But Kander said the restaurant could not survive the pandemic and the departure of the chef four years later.

The restaurant also lacked a hometown customer base. John Paylor, who was riding down the street on a recent day in a motorized wheelchair, said the restaurant was too expensive for most Braddock residents, even with the discount.

“You’re the mayor of a depressed town … I’m not paying no $50″ for dinner, he said. “That’s a week, four days of groceries. That’s how it was. It was like, if you ain’t on his side or go along with him then he have nothing to do with you.”

The restaurant's closing in 2021 rankled many residents, who said it proved Fetterman was out of touch. Some critics even said he was using the community to advance his political career.

But Fetterman's decision to put down roots in Braddock speaks volumes about his intent, his allies say.

“There are a lot of guys like John who never would have given years of their life to a town like Braddock,” Doose said. “It became his community, too, and he was doing things to make change. So what if he also had goals and aspirations?”