SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, PA — This past June, Dr. Mehmet Oz was declared the winner of Pennsylvania’s Republican primary for US Senate by just 951 votes. Even so, he was not in a good position. And things were about to get a whole lot worse.
His bitter primary contest against businessman David McCormick had left him battered. His Democratic opponent, Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, had gone on the attack — portraying Oz as an elite carpetbagger from New Jersey. Polls showed Oz had slid into a double-digit deficit in the race.
The money had dried up, and establishment Republicans were within an inch on giving up on him. The heart surgeon-turned-celebrity doctor was left with two choices: Go big or go home.
Oz went big — taking turns driving with his staff in his navy Denali — to meet voters in almost every county in the state. He held 90-minute town hall meetings and didn’t leave until he fielded every single question. He hosted business round tables, visited parents groups, maneuvered around cow pies at farm shows. With each visit, he gave interviews to local radio, print and television outlets, addressing the specific concerns of those communities.
Recently, his months on the road have started to pay off. With just one month to go before Election Day on Nov. 8, in one of the most important seats in the country, this race is now a squeaker. The most recent RealClearPolitics polling average shows Fetterman’s once-massive lead over Oz has shrunk to a statistical tie, and the Cook Political Report is now calling the race a toss-up.
Sitting on a worn couch in a Philadelphia banquet hall, Oz is dressed in a navy suit and appears to be calm under pressure. He insists that his trip from the bottom of the polls to a near tie hasn’t rattled him.
“It really humbles you,” he said, “when you meet people in their backyards, or on their farms, or in their neighborhoods and hear them talk about the things their communities need and how deeply it concerns them when those needs aren’t met. And it also has energized me. These conversations remind me how important it is to serve people’s needs, to really listen, and stay connected to them — and not Washington — if I am elected to the Senate.”
While Oz was busy building relationships with voters, Fetterman built his following on Twitter. He mocked Oz for where he used to live (New Jersey), for what kind of shoes he supposedly wears (Gucci loafers), for calling a veggie tray “crudité.” Snooki from MTV’s “Jersey Shore” was even enlisted to tease Oz.
But Oz said he didn’t let Fetterman’s stunt tactics get to him.
“There was an epiphany for me after seeing a series of memes [Fetterman] sent out that made me pause and say, ‘You know, I didn’t give up everything I was doing in my life in an effort to help the country, to try to heal the country, try to fix some of the challenges that we’re facing, in order to talk about mundane topics that have no real benefit to the voter.’ ”
Even so, Fetterman’s jokes initially seemed to land with the voters. A cult fan base cheered on his online antics, while the media celebrated his progressive populist bona fides.
Never mind that his parents supported him financially until he was 49, or that he had failed to improve Braddock, the industrial town where he served as mayor from 2006 to 2019. Despite his claims that he “actually made his community safer,” data between 2005 and 2018 shows violent crime went up under his leadership, not down.
But none of this seemed to matter. Not even a stroke Fetterman suffered in May, leaving him unable to process verbal questions, could derail his campaign.
And then, as Fetterman started giving short speeches at campaign rallies, his halting, slurred, sometimes confused remarks forced reporters to start asking harder questions about the true impact of his stroke.
Oz said he has deep compassion for Fetterman’s health issues. But he has a problem with his lack of transparency. So far, his opponent has not disclosed his medical records despite calls for him to be more upfront about his ability to serve in Congress.
“You owe voters that courtesy, it is as simple as that,” Oz said.
When Fetterman made his first public appearance since his stroke on Aug. 12, Oz immediately challenged him to a debate. He asked for five debates from Sept. 6 to Oct. 5 — all sponsored by local television affiliates across the state.
Fetterman called his requests “an act of desperation,” but he eventually conceded to a single face-off on Oct. 25 — more than one month after early voting began on Sept. 19 and just two weeks before Election Day.
Oz said voters deserve answers before the ballots are cast.
“The absentee ballots are out, they are circulating. Not only has Fetterman not done any interviews with reporters to address tough questions, he won’t do a debate [so] voters [can] make a decision after hearing what his positions and solutions are on important issues, like crime, or the drug crisis or inflation,” he said.
Oz — who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump — has known him for years before either man ran for office. Although he says he was excited about Trump’s support and acknowledges it helped him in the primary, he hasn’t pushed their allegiance too hard during his campaign.
At an event in the Philadelphia suburbs of Delaware County, where residents chose Biden over Trump in 2020 by just over 80,000 votes, crowds started showing up hours before Oz was set to speak. Of the several hundred in attendance, it was interesting to note that only three wore red “Make America Great Again” hats.
Chris Burkett 67, a recently retired civil engineer from West Chester, said Trump is the last thing he is thinking about right now, even though he voted for him in both presidential elections.
“They really underestimate the voter. Democrats and reporters that is,” Burkett said. “They also don’t listen or understand what our concerns are. We aren’t voting for president, we are voting for Senate. That shadow of Trump they try to create only exists in their minds.
“Everyone wants to [put] Trump on the ballot,” he continued. “They’re doing everything they can with Mar-a-Lago to get everybody’s attention away from those major issues like inflation, crime, the border, the disaster we had in Afghanistan.”
Several people around Burkett nodded their heads in agreement.
“I’m looking at voting for somebody who I trust to make the decisions that are going to need to be made in the future and about the future,” Burkett added, saying he supported Oz long before Trump endorsed him in the primary.
Winning this race in Pennsylvania is critical for both parties in their efforts to grab control of the Senate. Currently the upper chamber is split 50-50, with the Democrats enjoying nominal control thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaker. While 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate are up for grabs, just seven of them — in Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — are toss-ups that will decide who wins the majority.
Most voters know Oz as a regular contributor to the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” followed by his own 13-year-long eponymous television show, and his many New York Times bestselling books.
But Oz’s story is also that of a successful first-generation American. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to parents who immigrated from Turkey, the 61-year-old Oz attended Harvard for his undergraduate degree in business, then Penn for his medical schooling. He and his wife, Lisa, have been married 37 years, have four adult children and four grandchildren. They own several investment properties including a cattle farm and commercial real estate, and now live in the house they were married in, in Bryn Athyn, Pa., while they renovate their new home down the street.
Today Oz’s net worth is more than $100 million, according to his financial disclosure, and it could be as high as $500 million.
And yet, despite Fetterman’s attempts to paint Oz as an elitist, the doctor has had great success connecting with people who aren’t as financially fortunate.
In Erie last week, Oz spent the day with local black entrepreneurs like Michael Hook to discuss how to turn the area into a more prominent, safer place for locals.
Hook told Oz how he came out of prison 23 years ago and now runs Making Lives Better, a non-profit that focuses on mentoring young men. After a long chat with Oz about fixing the drug problem plaguing the city, Hook said he was backing the doctor for Senate.
“I appreciate that he took the time to listen but also spent real time in the neighborhood. When you show up, people respect that. I respect that,” Hook told me.
In September, Oz spontaneously stopped by the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia — a minority neighborhood struggling with open air drug markets and dogged by some of the highest rates of gun violence in the city. When several drug addicts asked Oz for his help, he took them to a detox center.
“I provided my contact information to all of them and I heard back from one of them that evening,” Oz told me. “I hope to hear from them again.”
David Urban, a Washington, DC-based Republican political consultant who served as former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s chief of staff, said the arc of Oz’s campaign has been nothing short of remarkable.
“Not many people expected much, then you look at what happened in Kensington with him putting people in his truck and taking them to rehab, it really showed his humanity,” Urban said. “It showed him hitting his stride at the right time and finding his voice.
“He’s a serious guy, capable of doing serious work,” Urban added. “It is a tactic that has re-energized his campaign and that is why the race is where it is right now.”
Oz said he is happy that people are finally taking notice of him for all the right reasons.
“I’m going to go back to the roots of why I got into this, what are the challenges that we’re facing as a nation and what is really happening that we can fix,” he said. “Because I want to be optimistic. I don’t go to the operating room with patients knowing that I’m going to do poorly. I go there knowing I can fix them.
“This is the difference between knowing and guessing. I’m not hypothesizing they might live. I have to, in my heart, believe I can fix the problem.”
