June 9, 2022
In Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz, Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race features two big, but vastly different personas, in a contest buffeted by national implications and swirling questions over Fetterman’s health.
As Oz secured a final 951-vote advantage to become the GOP’s nominee, Fetterman released his first two ads amid growing questions about the Democrat’s health in what is guaranteed to be a long, grueling and expensive race that will draw nationwide attention.
Oz won the GOP nomination in a squeaker while Fetterman, the former mayor of Braddock near Pittsburgh, cruised to victory in the May 17 Democratic primary.
The differences don’t stop there.
Borick said the race presents voters with a stark contrast, a wealthy, TV celebrity heart surgeon who only recently moved to Pennsylvania, against Fetterman, the towering and tattooed West Reading native who’s partial to Carhartt hoodies and shorts regardless of the weather.
“You can’t really go back and say, ‘Oh, it’s like this, because it’s not. There’s not an easy comparison point,” said Chris Borick, a political science professor and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
That point was driven home even more so Monday when Fetterman’s wife, Gisele, saying to reporters that her husband might not get back on the campaign trail for a few more weeks after suffering a stroke on May 13.
Borick said the race presents voters with a stark contrast, a wealthy, TV celebrity heart surgeon who only recently moved to Pennsylvania, against Fetterman, the towering and tattooed West Reading native who’s partial to Carhartt hoodies and shorts regardless of the weather.
“For the Fetterman campaign, they couldn’t have asked for a contrast that they’d want more,” said Borick, who foresees ads portraying Oz as a political opportunist and Fetterman as a tireless champion of Braddock, an economically depressed former steel town.
As for the Oz campaign, Borick said it would likely target many of Fetterman’s policy positions as too far left for Pennsylvania and create “an image of the other” to turn the state’s sizable older voting population against Fetterman.
An Oz campaign official, in an interview with PennLive, pushed back on the carpetbagger tag that even some GOP primary opponents hit him with, saying Oz, who moved back to Pennsylvania in late 2020, also attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and married his wife and had children in Montgomery County.
On Tuesday, the Fetterman campaign gave a first taste of its general election strategy by releasing two ads that will run in certain Pennsylvania markets.
“Labels” will run on Pittsburgh and Scranton broadcast television, the campaign said. In the ad, Fetterman appears in his trademark hoodie and shorts, addresses the camera directly over shots of blue-collar workers going about their day, and seems to take a veiled shot at Oz’s decades living out of state.
A second ad is narrated by Clarion Area School Board member and veteran Braxton White, who criticizes Washington politicians for “bad deals that sent away our jobs” and inaction on the opioid epidemic.
Besides Johnstown and Altoona broadcast stations, the ad will also run on Fox News in the Johnstown, Scranton and Pittsburgh markets, a clear indication that the Fetterman campaign is targeting those traditionally Democratic blue-collar voters who have turned Republican over the last 20 years.
The Oz official said he will not cede any ground to Fetterman and plans on taking his message to “every corner of the state.”
Pennsylvania voters are used to being at the epicenter of national politics and this year is simply an extension of that, said Borick. “They’ll be reminded regularly that control of the Senate is going to be impacted by this race,” he said.
Although Borick said that “candidates still matter,” it’s shaping up to be a very good mid-term election year for Republicans that Fetterman must overcome.
