Three city council members from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who have voiced support for the defunding police, stumped with the state’s Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, John Fetterman, on Monday.

In a tweet, Fetterman said he “stopped by some of the shops on 52nd St in West Philly today with” Councilmembers Jamie Gauthier, Kendra Brooks, and Isaiah Thomas. He called them “outstanding Councilmembers who are with me in my fight to turn out every vote here in Philly.”

Fox News’s Kyle Morris was the first to report that all three Philadelphia politicians have “expressed support for efforts to defund police departments.”

Months after the death of George Floyd in May of 2020, which led to a summer of riots and calls to “Defund the Police” from the radical left, Gauthier, a Democrat, told Philadephia Magazine that she supports “the movement to defund the police” and dubbed policing in general as a “racist institution.”

 “I do support the movement to defund the police and reimagine what that looks like,” she said but submitted that she did “see a need for police in our society.”

“Although I like the vision — one day having no need for police — it would take a long time for us to get there,” she added. “I don’t want to minimize where [the call for abolition] comes from — it comes from the fact that police are a racist institution.”

After Floyd’s death, Brooks authored an opinion piece in the Philadephia Inquirer in June 2020, where she wrote that “uprisings have made it very clear” and “the people have clear demands: Defund the police and invest in black communities.”

She went on to call for “a real conversation about redistributing resources from the police budget:”

I will not vote for any budget that increases funding to the police but does nothing to support communities. If we want a recovery that leaves no one behind, we need a real conversation about redistributing resources from the police budget into community-led programs that can keep us safe and cut down on gun violence. We must reject a budget that decreases critical funds for housing, libraries, recreation centers, art programs, and immigration services while increasing money for the police by tens of millions.

Brooks, a member of the Working Families Party, also expressed her displeasure with a 2020 budget proposal that would not have increased funding for the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) from the previous year. She asserted that this did not go far enough.

“To pass a budget with no cuts to the PPD when thousands people are in the streets, occupying buildings, calling, emailing, rising up in grief and rage and saying ‘defund the police,’ is a mistake,” she tweeted.

“I can’t vote for a budget that shows disregard for the voices of our constituents,” she added.

In his own essay that was published by WHYY and came a month after Brooks’s article, Thomas, who is a Democrat, wrote that too much of Philadelphia’s budget was going toward the police department:

In Philadelphia, approximately 15% of the city’s operating budget is allocated to the police department. In a moment where taxpayers are hearing about cuts to critical services, it is understandable that this fact would frustrate many Philadelphians. Let me be clear, it frustrates me, too.

I think that we are allocating way too much of the taxpayers’ dollars to the police department. And I look forward to a chance to discuss, with my colleagues and the public, how to make more effective investments in public safety.

Fetterman has fallen under scrutiny and has gone on the defensive after his criminal-friendly record came to the forefront in his race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz. As the state’s lieutenant governor, Fetterman chairs the Board of Pardons, and commutation recommendations from the board to Gov. Tom Wolfe (D) skyrocketed under his leadership. He has also stated that emptying the state’s prison system by one-third would “not make anyone less safe in Pennsylvania.”

After the spotlight was cast on his record, Fetterman released an advertisement where he claimed that during his time as Mayor of Braddock, “[w]e did whatever it took to fund our police.” His appearance with Gauthier, Brooks, and Thomas threatens to undercut the pro-police narrative he is working to build in the purple state.