PHILADELPHIA — Mehmet Oz took one look at Jeff Bartos, and worried.
It was early May, and Bartos was just weeks removed from thyroid surgery, his campaign for U.S. Senate was struggling, and he was exhausted while driving across Pennsylvania for county party dinners.
He and Oz, then rivals for the state’s Republican Senate nomination, were in Crawford County, in Pennsylvania’s northwest corner, and Bartos was determined to drive halfway home that night. He wanted to be back in Montgomery County for Mother’s Day the next morning. Oz stopped him.
”He says to me, ‘Look, doctor’s orders, you look like s--- and you’re not driving anywhere,’” recalled Bartos. ”There were no cameras there. ... Mehmet did that because he cares and he’s a physician.”
Oz assigned a campaign aide to take Bartos to his final event, and then drive his opponent home.
Bartos has reason to put Oz in a positive light: He’s now the doctor’s campaign chair. He says that moment shows that despite the deluge of negative information dug up about Oz during a brutal Republican primary and general election brawl, there’s a different side of him.
“That’s the kind of guy he is,” Bartos said.
Voters still view Oz unfavorably
The problem for Oz is that a huge swath of Pennsylvania voters don’t buy it.
After a lifetime of starry success, Oz’s first foray into politics has been weighed down by a deeply negative image. Both Republicans and Democrats have turned his background against him, challenging his authenticity, questioning his ties to Pennsylvania, and accusing him of opportunism.
At a moment when many voters are struggling to stretch their budgets, and inflation is dominating their concerns, one of the key questions that could decide Pennsylvania’s crucial U.S. Senate race is whether they believe a wealthy celebrity doctor can understand them, or will fight for them.
Democrats are betting that the remaining sliver of undecided voters will break for the candidate they like and trust more. Polling has consistently suggested that’s been the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.
Some 50% of likely Pennsylvania voters had an unfavorable view of Oz, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday, including 39% who saw him “strongly” unfavorably. Only 38% surveyed saw Oz in a positive light.
Those kind of negatives have been consistent, and often worse, throughout Oz’s campaign.
Fetterman’s image has also taken a hit under a barrage of GOP attacks: 47% of likely voters disapproved of him, including 39% strongly. But 44% saw him favorably. His everyman brand has given Democrats hope that Fetterman can outrun national trends tilting toward the GOP.
A new poll released Wednesday backed up that idea. When Monmouth University asked 608 Pennsylvanians who “understands the concerns of voters like you,” 55% chose Fetterman. Only 42% picked Oz.
“Oz comes across as smug and aloof and unlikable,” said J.B. Poersch, president of Senate Majority PAC, the Super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Even as Fetterman struggled through last week’s high-profile Senate debate, Democrats argued that Oz’s smarmy style would leave him unable to capitalize.
From glamour to politics
With control of the Senate potentially riding on the outcome, the race is so tight it could still go either way. Oz, 62, stands within a hair of winning a race that would crown a lifetime of success.
Before running for Senate, Oz was a two-sport athlete at Harvard, a renowned heart surgeon, a businessman who invented medical devices, and a daytime TV fixture with a glamorous image, luxurious mansions, and fine-cut suits, along with sometimes questionable medical advice.
His first Senate campaign, though, has stripped away the gloss. It hasn’t helped that he lived in New Jersey for more than 30 years before moving to Pennsylvania in late 2020.
Since early this year, Oz has been bombarded with tens of millions of dollars of attack ads.
“The nature of our political campaigns is such that almost every candidate in a competitive, well-funded campaign ends up with high negatives. That is very typical,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who twice won statewide races by paper-thin margins.
But while Democrats attack Oz’s personal traits, Toomey said the GOP nominee is providing answers to problems like inflation.
“That’s what people care about the most. Not, ‘Did you grow up the way I grew up?’” Toomey said. “The biggest concern is: ‘Do you understand my concerns and what I’m feeling?’”
Oz has offered relatively little in the way of policy vision, mostly campaigning as someone who would oppose President Joe Biden and not be Fetterman. He has also argued that as a surgeon, unlike politicians, he had to be pragmatic, and solve problems.
“Are you unhappy with where America is headed? I am, and if you are as well, then I’m the candidate for change,” Oz said in last week’s debate against Fetterman. “I’m a living embodiment of the American dream.”
Fetterman says Oz cares only about himself, and can’t feel what ordinary Pennsylvanians are going through.
“Dr. Oz doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t even understand shopping,” Fetterman said in an October interview, referring to the surgeon’s viral foray into a grocery store, where he railed against inflation by citing the unacceptable price of “crudité.”
That was just one example of Oz’s showmanship backfiring.
While campaigning for the GOP nomination, he flew to Hollywood to visit his own new star on the Walk of Fame, knelt over, and kissed it. A photo of the moment featured heavily in ads by both Republicans and Democrats. After winning the GOP primary, he celebrated July Fourth at a star-studded white-linen party in the Hamptons. And while trying to build regular-guy credibility at a rainy Penn State tailgate, he toted a plastic cup of red wine.
Oz has pivoted several times
None of those moments, of course, have policy effects on Pennsylvanians.
But elections are often decided by how voters feel about the candidates.
And rivals in both parties have pointed out that Oz’s brief political career has already been marked by multiple pivots.
For years, he described himself as a socially moderate Republican who was personally opposed to abortion, but also disagreed with laws interfering with women’s choices. He co-bylined a syndicated advice column that called for tougher gun laws and warned of the health and environmental risks of fracking.
And he said he admired another celebrity turned politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who governed California as a relatively moderate Republican.
But when Oz joined the Pennsylvania GOP primary, he said he opposed abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother. He opposed tougher gun laws and urged more fracking. He now says the newspaper column was handled by his coauthor, though Oz still had a contract for the column through early January. He clung to former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
Now in the general election, Oz has again portrayed himself as a centrist seeking “balance.”
“One strength you think he would have had when he entered the race: He wasn’t a typical politician. But he acted like one,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic from Western Pennsylvania. “There are likely a large number of voters that may agree with him on the issues, they just won’t vote for him because they don’t like him.”
A CBS News poll conducted days before last week’s debate showed that only 30% of Oz’s supporters said they were “very enthusiastic” about him, compared with 47% of Fetterman’s.
In Democrats’ telling, the self-interest that drove Oz to hawk miracle diet pills, debunked medical advice, and products from companies that sponsored his show also explains why he changed his public positions and moved to a new state to seek a Senate seat.
A long list of achievements
If Oz does reach the Senate, it would cap a career of success in elite institutions.
The son of a thoracic surgeon who emigrated from Turkey, Oz was born in Ohio and grew up in Wilmington. (On the campaign trail he just says it was just a bit “south of Kennett Square.”) He attended the prestigious Tower Hill school before heading to Harvard, where he played water polo (as a goalie) and football (at safety). He graduated in 3 1/2 years.
Oz came to Philadelphia to earn medical and business degrees at the same time at the University of Pennsylvania, which he emphasizes to show his local ties. There he met his wife, Lisa, who comes from a family with deep roots in Bryn Athyn, in Montgomery County.
His medical career took him to the heights of his profession: He was a top surgeon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and director of the Integrative Medicine Center at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center. He won a prestigious research award four years running and developed new methods and devices for heart surgeries. He got a taste of fame as part of the team that operated on Frank Torre, brother of then-Yankees manager Joe Torre, in the middle of the 1996 World Series.
For a while Oz was active with the Bergen County Republican Party in North Jersey. He hosted a 2004 fundraiser for George W. Bush’s presidential reelection, telling a local newspaper he hoped the Bush administration could bring about health care reform.
Later came regular segments on Oprah Winfrey’s show, then his own TV show. It ran for 13 years, ending when Oz launched his run for Senate.
Bill Bretz, chairman of the Westmoreland County Republican Party, argued that Oz has a more authentic story than Fetterman, who, despite his blue-collar stylings, relied on his parents’ financial support deep into his 40s.
“He knows my name, he knows my wife’s name, he greets me” when he visits the county, said Bretz, who said he’s met Oz more than a dozen times.
Oz earned a fortune from his career and patents, and married into the Asplundhs, one of Pennsylvania’s wealthiest families. Together he and his wife are worth more than $100 million, and likely multiple times that, according to financial disclosure forms.
That wealth has underpinned his campaign: Oz has spent nearly $27 million of his own money on the race, including adding $4 million in just the last two weeks. (During the campaign he and his wife also bought a $3.1 million house in Bryn Athyn.)
A stage-managed campaign
At times, he seems to have a flair for TV-style heroics. With cameras rolling during a visit to Kensington’s drug market, Oz loaded four people into a pickup truck and rode with them to a church to connect them with rehabilitation services. When a woman collapsed before a Bucks County rally, Oz jogged out from backstage and stayed with her until paramedics arrived. At other events, he puts a sympathetic arm around mothers who lost children to gun violence or opioid addiction.
But some critics say the former TV star hasn’t truly put himself into the public eye. His schedule is tightly guarded, and events stage-managed. (One anguished woman he once comforted was also a campaign aide.)
For much of his campaign, Oz’s team has handpicked news outlets to invite to events and often announces the stops after the fact, leaving the public and media to see only select highlights. News reporters from around the country — and globe — have been so frustrated they’ve turned to other journalists to try to find out how to catch a glimpse of the candidate. His campaign often ignores them. He has refused numerous interview requests from The Inquirer.
“With these very highly curated events that don’t really have him interacting with undecided voters, it makes it hard to turn that tide once it’s been branded,” said David Dix, a Philadelphia-based strategist who has worked on Republican and Democratic campaigns. “I don’t think he did enough to let Pennsylvanians feel him.”
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