Played at being mayor is a nice way of saying it. If you read up on his Braddock time, it sounds more like a Batman villain origin story. He finds a rundown town filled with crime and squalor and sets up shop, buying key properties for practically nothing, barely participating in mayoral duties, and moving "his people" (lily white socialists and hippy artists) in to gentrify the place while he sits in the catbird seat in his centrally located car dealership estate, and waits for the money to roll in once the property values start to rise.
> If you read up on his Braddock time... <
I don’t know the specifics about that. But I know the town of Braddock rather well. I’ve driven through it many times. Braddock was once (back in the 1960s) quite a place. Then the Pittsburgh mills collapsed.
Braddock was a mess before Fetterman got there, while Fetterman was there, and after Fetterman left. I can’t say he made things worse. But I can say that he’s way off-base bragging about anything he did there.