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Democratic Sen. John Fetterman says he understands how his colleague Sen. Mitt Romney can find parts of living and working in DC isolating. He's just not eating salmon and ketchup to cope.
"I don't eat salmon sandwiches with ketchup and I don't have a recliner, but we both apparently just sit by ourselves in our apartments," Fetterman told The Washington Post in a profile about his year of living in the capital.
Fetterman told the publication that he still struggles with missing his family, even as he returns to his more unconventional roots inside the Capitol. Fetterman said that hearing about what Romney told his biographer about his nights at home alone while in DC for legislative business resonated with him.
"It's lonely sometimes after things are done here," Fetterman said. His family remains back home.
The Pennsylvania Democrat said he's curious about restaurants in his Navy Yard neighborhood, which is close to the Capitol and where the MLB's Washington Nationals play, but doesn't want to appear as a "creeper" by showing up for a "table of one dressed in a hoodie and shorts."
Inside the Senate, Fetterman is coming into his own, returning to the trolly tone that powered his Senate campaign that flipped a key seat to his party after mocking former reality TV Dr. Mehmet Oz for months. Sen. Bob Menendez, an embattled New Jersey Democrat who is facing multiple federal criminal indictments, is one of his current targets. Fetterman is even fine with mocking Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who pushed the Senate to change its rules so Fetterman would have to wear a suit.
Fetterman says it was never his goal to fully fit into the clubby mood that personifies much of official Washington.
"I don't really ever want to have power lunches at steak houses and all that kind of thing because that's L-O-L," he said.
