Two Senate hopefuls are battling to fill a seat vacated by the retiring incumbent in Pennsylvania: Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, the tattooed former mayor of Braddock, PA, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Turkish-American television presenter and retired surgeon who shot to fame through his regular appearances on “Oprah”.
In the mid-1990s, John Fetterman had a job at one of the world’s top insurance firms and looked set for a successful career in the sector like his father.
But Fetterman resigned to become a social worker in Pittsburgh, in part inspired by his experience with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program as a longtime mentor to an 8-year-old boy who was losing both parents to AIDS. Years earlier, his best friend had been killed in a car crash at 27, an event Fetterman has often cited as being formative.
He went on to join the AmeriCorps volunteer service before going back to school to earn a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
In 2001 he began helping high-school dropouts and at-risk youth in Braddock. Encouraged by his students, he ran for mayor in 2005 – winning by a single vote. Over the next 13 years as mayor he focused on rebuilding the town and community, from tackling inequality to creating jobs to establishing urban gardens on abandoned properties.
After an unsuccessful initial Senate run in 2016 he ran to be his state’s lieutenant governor, winning the post in 2018.
At 6-foot-8, Fetterman has a big presence. When a right-wing media personality questioned the tattoos that cover his forearms, Fetterman explained in a September NBC News op-ed that one is the ZIP code for Braddock while others are dates memorializing the victims of deadly violence while he was mayor.
Fetterman, 53, suffered a stroke before the primary in May and has since been steadily recovering. But his halting performance at a debate with Mehmet Oz raised new questions over the state of his health and his ability to communicate.
Attempts by the Oz campaign to capitalize on Fetterman’s health issues may have backfired, however, instead coming across as petty and belittling as well as derisive toward those with disabilities.
Mehmet Oz was raised in Wilmington, Delaware, by Turkish immigrant parents. He graduated from Harvard University before earning a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. As a dual citizen of the United States and Turkey, he briefly served in the Turkish military while a student to maintain his citizenship status. He went on to become a surgeon at Columbia University medical center. An advocate of holistic and alternative medicine, his 2005 book – the first of many – led to an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he became a regular guest.
Dubbed “America’s Doctor” by Winfrey, his public appearances led to a radio show and eventually his own TV program, the Dr. Oz Show. But his fame also drew scrutiny from medical professionals, who critiqued his advocacy of treatments that lacked scientific backing. In one 2012 episode, Oz hosted a guest psychic who said she could communicate with the dead.
Oz, 62, was questioned before a 2014 Senate panel to respond to questions about his promotion of “miracle” weight-loss products. A study that year in the British Medical Journal found that more than half of his recommendations (54 percent) either lacked or contradicted the scientific evidence.
After launching his Senate candidacy in 2021, Oz criticized the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and promoted the use of malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in treating the disease despite a lack of evidence.
An October article in Jezebel cited testimony from a whistleblowing veterinarian detailing violations of the Animal Welfare Act by Oz’s research team at Columbia. A review of 75 medical studies published by Oz between 1989 and 2010 found that his research “killed over 300 dogs and inflicted significant suffering on them and the other animals used in experiments” in violation of the law. In 2004, Columbia University was ordered to pay a $2,000 penalty for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
But his continuing popularity has earned “Dr. Oz” legions of followers, an endorsement from Donald Trump and immense wealth – something his opponents have tried to weaponize. A campaign video in which Oz goes grocery shopping to seem more relatable backfired when he referred to a raw vegetable platter using the French word “crudités”, which his opponents seized on to make him seem like an out-of-touch elite.
Critics have also pointed out that Oz’s ties to Pennsylvania are tenuous given that he lives most of the time in New Jersey (although he has also had a PA address since 2020). Oz has admitted to owning two homes while public records indicate he owns 10 residences including mansions, country houses and condos, the Daily Beast reported.
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