Pennsylvania Republican Senatorial nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz responded to a surprise endorsement from the major newspaper in opponent John Fetterman's home county on Monday.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which shares heavily-Democratic Allegheny County with Fetterman's adopted hometown of Braddock, wrote that Fetterman's "lack of transparency" over his medical records is "troubling" and that it "suggests an impulse to conceal and a mistrust of the people."
The paper further torched the former mayor of the postindustrial Pittsburgh suburb as having "little experience in holding real jobs or facing the problems of working people."
In response, Oz said policies identical to Fetterman's are being employed in the Philadelphia area, where he lives, as murders and carjackings spike throughout Pennsylvania's largest city.
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"I think what you witnessed during the debate was that John Fetterman can't defend his radical views. I don't think Barack Obama can either," he said, as the former president is scheduled to stump for Fetterman.
Oz called the Post-Gazette a "fabulous paper" that would not normally endorse a Republican. "But God bless them… they've had enough as well – they're a big paper in Pittsburgh."
The Republican noted there is no state north of North Carolina with a non-retiring Republican senator, adding that Pennsylvania has had at least one Republican senator most of his life.
For decades, centrist Arlen Specter – who changed parties twice – sat in the state's senior senate seat, while conservative firebrand Rick Santorum was a high-profile junior senator in the 1990s and 2000s, and the late Sen. John Heinz III – who died in a plane crash in 1991 – was another prominent GOP lawmaker in that chamber.
The current seat is being vacated by Sen. Pat Toomey, an Allentown Republican. Either Fetterman or Oz will become junior to Democrat Bob Casey Jr., son of the late governor who had been known for his Planned Parenthood v. Casey litigation.
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Oz later said Fetterman's policies line up very well with the main tenets of the far left, pointing again to Philadelphia's decades of blue rule:
"Fundamentally, if you're thinking more about protecting the criminals than the innocent, then the victims, which again Fetterman did, was to push against the other members of the parole board to get murderers out, because he's acknowledged if he had a magic wand, the one thing he'd want to do is get rid of life in prison for felony murder. This is just bizarre."
Under the liberal governance trifecta of Mayor James Kenney, a majority Democratic city council and Democratic District Attorney Lawrence Krasner, Philadelphia "is an unimaginable mess," Oz said.
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As Fox News host Sean Hannity noted, Pennsylvania's key races have tightened as of late. Oz is nearly tied or better versus Oz, Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro leads Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano by an RCP-average 7 points.
A key House race, the Allentown-centric 7th District is also home to a nearly tied race between Democratic incumbent Rep. Susan Wild and Republican businesswoman Lisa Scheller. A Muhlenberg College poll taken earlier this month has that race separated by one point.
Just north of that district, the Pocono-centric 8th district originally home to President Biden and currently represented by Democrat Matt Cartwright is rated a "toss-up" by Cook Political Report.
