Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has not yet said that he will seek re-election in 2028, but that did not stop the first candidate seeking to unseat him from announcing the launch of his campaign on Monday.
Ahmed Moor, a Gaza-born, Philadelphia-raised writer for left-wing, anti-Israel outlets like Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss, said that he was running for the Pennsylvania Senate seat to “end the war in Iran” and call for “accountability for genocide.”
“A few years ago my birthplace was turned to rubble in a genocide funded by our tax dollars, with the support of politicians on both sides of the aisle who can’t find money for transit or removing asbestos from our schools,” Moor wrote on his campaign website.
Fetterman has emerged as one of the strongest pro-Israel voices in the Democratic Party and has been the only Democrat in the Senate to oppose war powers resolutions aimed at limiting U.S. President Donald Trump’s authority to take military action against Iran.
Polls have consistently shown that Fetterman’s approval among Pennsylvania Democrats is underwater but that he has a strongly favorable opinion rating among Republicans in the state.
Those polls have fueled speculation that Fetterman might switch parties, something he said he had “no plans” to do in an opinion piece he wrote in the Washington Post in May, or else face a primary challenge from the Left.
Moor, the first person to mount such a challenge, has made a career out of espousing radical anti-Israel views as the co-editor of “After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine” in his other writing and commentary.
“Why are Zionists so resistant to the idea of Palestinian resistance?” he told The Forward in February. “Any normal person would look and say, ‘Of course these people have a right to resist.’”
In 2009, when he was 24-years-old, Moor wrote for Electronic Intifada that “‘Zionist Israel’ does not have the right to exist,” arguing elsewhere in the piece that “Zionism is racism” and “Zionists are racists.”
During the 2014 Gaza war, Moor wrote in Huffington Post that “naturally, the Palestinians availed themselves of their right to self-defense” using “crude, unguided workshop missiles to reclaim the balance of fear.”
In 2025 he was named a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace and since Oct. 7 has dedicated much of his professional writing and social media posting to condemning Israel.
Fetterman’s vulnerability in the 2028 Senate election goes beyond his weak poll numbers among Democrats. His 2022 stroke, which has severely impaired his speaking ability, as well as media reports about his work habits in the Senate, have raised questions about whether he is willing or able to seek another term.
Whether he decides to run or not, as a Democrat or otherwise, it’s not clear that Pennsylvanians want a candidate who is as opposed to the Jewish state as Moor.
Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) won statewide election there in 2024, and Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish, pro-Israel Democrat, won re-election on Tuesday by more than 20 percentage points.
In an interview with Politico on Tuesday, Shapiro called Pennsylvania “the ultimate swing seat” and touted the success of moderate candidates who swept to victory in red states on Tuesday.
“The common-sense approach we’ve taken to governing, the kind of candidates we recruited to run for Congress who won, I think that that can be a model for our party,” Shapiro said.
