Mehmet Oz Democrat John Fetterman won Pennsylvania’s pivotal U.S. Senate race, flipping a Republican-held seat as he recovers from a stroke during the bare-knee campaign and giving Democrats hope they can retain control of the closely divided state. hall. Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz, the smooth-talking and wealthy heart surgeon turned TV celebrity in the presidential battleground state. Fetterman credited his “every county, every vote” campaign strategy in which the tattooed, hoodie-wearing candidate sought to bring the Democratic Party back to predominantly white working-class districts that have increasingly rejected the party. “And that’s exactly what happened,” Fetterman, 53, told a cheering crowd early Wednesday at a concert venue in Pittsburgh. “We blocked them. We held the line. I never expected that we would turn those red counties blue, but we did what we had to do and had that conversation in every one of those counties.” Along the way, he had vowed to be the Democrats’ “51st vote” to pass landmark legislation protecting abortion, health care, same-sex marriage, unions and voting rights, as well as raising the minimum wage. He likened his stroke, which he had in May, to the fall and adopted it as a campaign mission. He ran for “anyone who’s ever been knocked down and got back up,” he told the crowd. “This fight is for the future of every community across Pennsylvania, for every small town or person who felt left behind, for every job lost, for every factory that ever closed, and for every person who worked hard but never got ahead. . .” Fetterman spoke smoothly early Wednesday but required closed captioning during media interviews and, two weeks ago, during the men’s lone conversation. He turned in a difficult performance in which he struggled to complete sentences, garbled words and fueled concern within his party that he had doomed the race. To underscore the importance of the race, President Joe Biden has campaigned in Pennsylvania for Fetterman three times in the past three weeks, while former President Donald Trump also dropped in to hold a rally for Oz, his running mate. Oz also carried heavy baggage into the election. That included having just moved from his longtime home in neighboring New Jersey — a mansion overlooking the Hudson River just across the street from Manhattan — and narrowly winning an explosive primary in which opponents characterized him as an unknown Hollywood liberal. Fetterman won despite national political adversity for Democrats, such as rising inflation. He will succeed the retirement of the second Republican senator, Pat Tomei. Fetterman sought to capitalize on the furor over the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling and vowed to vote to repeal the filibuster, the Senate rule that often requires a 60-vote supermajority to advance legislation. Fetterman characterized Oz’s vote as a vote to ban abortion — mocking Oz’s comment during the debate that he wants “women, doctors, local political leaders” to decide the fate of abortion — and painted Oz as a soulless tv salesman who made junk health supplements for money and will say or do anything to get elected. For much of the race, Fetterman has had to explain progressive positions to a swing-state electorate, including overturning natural gas drilling and clemency for state prisoners convicted of murder. A stroke on May 13 left him unable to speak fluently and quickly process spoken conversation into meaning, a common effect called auditory processing disorder. Oz relentlessly challenged Fetterman on whether he was being honest about the effects of the stroke and pressured Fetterman to release his medical records. Fetterman refused and also refused to let his doctors answer questions from reporters. Fetterman had insisted he would make a full recovery. He tried to turn his recovery into a strength, accusing Oz of trying to exploit his disability and saying it had made him more empathetic to the millions who suffer from medical problems. Eventually, Fetterman’s everyman appeal earned Oz stardom as host of the daytime television show “The Dr. Oz Show’. Fetterman is irreverent, simple, and more like an aging professional wrestler. At 6-foot-8, he’s tattooed, goatee-like and shiny, with a clean-shaven head and casual dress that often includes shorts—even in winter—and a hoodie. Along the way, he revolutionized the use of social media in campaigns, bringing in a flood of small-dollar donations and mercilessly trolling Oz’s gaffes, wealth and status as a recent Pennsylvania transplant. And he has sought to recoup Democratic losses among white voters by stepping up his campaign efforts in more distant counties where Republican margins have grown rapidly in recent years. Democrats saw him as someone who could normalize the party with disillusioned voters in the Trump era. Oz was torn between a primary in which he tried to fend off attacks that he was secretly liberal and a general election showdown against Fetterman in which he tried to appeal to moderate and black voters. Even with Trump’s support, she won the primary by just 900 votes in a contest that went to a statewide recount. Trump was a longtime friend and fellow entertainer whom Oz had met through New York’s social and philanthropic fundraising circles. But Trump’s most hard-line voters were not quick to take to Oz, and many in the state’s party establishment had lined up with a primary opponent. The election was the most expensive for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania, topping $300 million. Money from the national teams poured in, and Oz spent more than $25 million of his own fortune on the race. Much of the Republicans’ TV ad money has been on crime, suggesting that Democrats have failed to protect people from violence and drugs and aiming to undermine one of Fetterman’s ways of appealing to black voters: his efforts as lieutenant governor to free the excessively incarcerated. rehabilitated or innocent. Oz and Republicans see it as freeing dangerous criminals to roam the streets, often distorting Fetterman’s positions. Fetterman, the former mayor for 13 years of tiny, impoverished Braddock, near Pittsburgh, used his time there to build credentials with the black community in the majority-black city, fight gun violence and keep a hospital in criminally damaged community. He has Braddock’s zip code — 15104 — tattooed on one arm and, while he was mayor, the date of every murder in the city as he worked to prevent crime. The Harvard-educated Fetterman became a progressive hero in the Pittsburgh area, an advocate for the legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage, and a media darling, garnering profiles in national publications and appearing on some of television’s most popular late-night shows. for its unconventionality. efforts to draw investment — including a Levi’s TV ad — to Braddock. For months around the 2020 election, he was a regular face of Democrats on cable news and on the campaign trail, holding up a shield for Biden and accusing Republicans who supported Trump of “stretching” Trump’s approval and lying about the validity of presidential election in Pennsylvania. . His wife — Gisele Barreto Fetterman, a Brazilian immigrant — helped reach Hispanic voters.
