Sharif Street, the state senator from Philadelphia’s 3rd District, vice-chair of the PA Democratic Party and a self-professed policy nerd, sci-fi enthusiast and vegetarian, appears at the edge of running for an open United States Senate in 2022.

He and his allies are expected to launch an exploratory committee sometime in the first quarter of 2021.

The 46-year-old Street is the son of John F. Street, the former mayor of Philadelphia, and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School who has served as a state senator since 2017.

As vice chair of the Democratic Committee in his home state, Street was intimately involved in the 2020 federal elections on behalf of the successful presidential candidacy of fellow Democrat Joe Biden. In a battleground election that helped propel President-elect Biden to Electoral College victory, the Pennsylvania results produced 3.46 million votes for Biden, to 3.38 million for Trump.

The 2022 race for the United States Senate has accelerated since October of this year, when incumbent U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, announced that he would not run for re-election to a third term and plans “to go back to the private sector” when his term ends. The 2022 contest for an open United States Senate seat at the midway point of Biden’s presidential term with senate control at stake figures to command national attention, as Pennsylvania confirms as one of the country’s diehard (3,902,160 D’s to 3,249,919 R’s) swing states.

Street said he drove 150,000 miles around Pennsylvania over the course of the last three years where he dove deep into the issues and concerns of his fellow residents, especially in the context of the presidential contest. “We built relationships and we’ve built messaging for Democrats to win after Donald Trump won the 2016 race in Pennsylvania,” Street told InsiderNJ.

“We have gotten back to basics,” he noted. “We have gotten back to people. We were spending too much time like we were sitting in classrooms at the University of Pennsylvania.”

President-elect Biden is a family friend, whose own style reinforced what Biden surrogate Street spearheaded in his home state.

“Our language in 2016 was not clear enough to communicate what regular folk want to know,” said the state senator. “Sometimes it’s as basic as affirming our belief that in the greatest country in the world, when you’re sick you need to be able to see a doctor. Rural and suburban Pennsylvanians need to understand that Democrats are for working people. First responders need to know that we are the party to prioritize protective resources.”

The fledgling statewide candidate said he is alert to Trump’s ability to connect with working people in a way that sets him apart from many of his fellow Republicans.

“It’s stunning to me that guy who sat on a golden throne said he was the part of the common man, but as Democrats we need to make sure we communicate that you’re not the common man, you’re the core of what we fight for,” said Street, who promised in his campaign – should he ultimately move ahead – to combine pro-jobs and pro-environmental policy.

A pivotal election year, 2022 could also be payback time for Republicans if Biden fails to deliver in his first two years as president.

Street said he is confident of a strong runway for his party, which in part motivates his political thinking on a U.S. Senate campaign.

“I don’t know if it will be a burden to carry the water of a guy born and raised in Scranton, whose wife is Jilly from Philly,” he said. “It wont be hard. I’m my own man, but Joe Biden’s morals have been aligned with my family’s for years. I fully recognize that it’s always tough with an incumbent at the midterm, and hopefully Congress will cooperate, but if Mitch McConnell and the U.S. Senate don’t, that might add more fuel to the fire and spark more demand for Democrats to add a senate seat.

“God willing that might be me, if Democrats win that seat and notch the senate in favor,” he added. “No matter what happens in Georgia.”