John Fetterman is again taking aim at his Pennsylvania Senate rival Mehmet Oz over Mr Oz’s longstanding ties to neighbouring New Jersey.
On Thurdsay, Mr Fetterman launched a petition asking that Mr Oz be inducted into the New Jersey State Hall of Fame — noting that Mr Oz spoke at the hall’s induction ceremony in 2019 and hoped to join the ranks of its honourees one day.
“We all know that Dr Oz is so proud of being Jersey Strong,” Mr Fetterman said in an accompanying video. “He’s a huge New Jersey celebrity who’s lived there for three decades. Clearly he loves his home state. To honor Dr Oz’s deep New Jersey roots, we thought it would be a great idea to start a petition and help him reach his dream of being inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.”
In a 2019 interview at the induction ceremony, Mr Oz suggested that great surgeons would be worth honouring alongside great athletes in future years.
“I’m from New Jersey, I appreciate all that our state offers, and we can take who’ve made big, coming from the state — you want to celebrate them,” Mr Oz said. “Because we’re all about resilience, and people have bounced around, and they know how to take a joke. It’s classic New Jersey.”
Mr Fetterman has made Mr Oz’s residency status perhaps the most visible issue of an incredibly critical race in the Republican effort to wrest control of the Senate away from the Democrats.
In recent weeks, Mr Fetterman has lambasted Mr Oz for filming a campaign video at his New Jersey home, begun selling Dr Oz for New Jersey merchandise, posted a video of Jersey Shore star Snooki trolling Mr Oz, and called Mr Oz a tourist for visiting Pat’s and Geno’s for cheesestakes in South Philadelphia.
Mr Oz is a longtime resident of New Jersey who owns a masion in Cliffside Park, but registered to vote at his in-laws’ Pennsylvania address in the buildup to the 2020 election and announced his candidacy in the commonwealth just more than a year later.
Mr Oz’s shallow roots in Pennsylvania, plus his outsize wealth, have perhaps made him a weaker candidate in a race that should be favourable to Republicans. Mr Fetterman has led in every public poll of the matchup so far, with three June surveys finding him ahead by four, six, and nine points, respectively.
Mr Oz has responded in recent days by critcising Mr Fetterman’s politics as extreme and casting doubt on his fitness as Mr Fetterman recovers from a stroke suffered just prior to his dominant win in the Democratic primary. Mr Fetterman, who recently sat for his first interview since suffering the stroke, said that he will return to the campaign trail “very soon.”
