JOHN FETTERMAN AND Mehmet Oz locked horns last night in the only debate scheduled for one of the most closely-watched US midterm election races.
There was no shortage of spectacle as the imposing 6’9″ Democrat Fetterman and Republican former daytime TV mainstay Dr. Oz made their pitches to voters in Pennsylvania’s US Senate race.
The pair sparred for an hour in state capital Harrisburg in a high stakes encounter for both parties, with Republicans needing to flip just one seat to prize the upper chamber of Congress from Democratic control.
Fetterman’s team had been doing some expectation-setting amid the 53-year-old’s comeback from a stroke in May.
The lieutenant governor is making an encouraging physical recovery but struggles to grasp some spoken words and occasionally to access words when speaking, according to his doctors.
Fetterman sought to tell voters about “The Oz Rule” in relation to his opponentm stating: “If he’s on TV, he’s lying,” Fetterman said of Oz.
Fetterman also occused his opponent of misleading voters about his record and complaining that the Oz has “never let me forget” about the stroke.
He apologised preemptively for any words he might miss but added that his campaign was about “fighting for everyone in Pennsylvania that never got knocked down.”
During the debate, Fetterman declined to pledge that he would release his full medical records, saying only that his doctors have passed him fit to serve.
Oz opened with criticism of Fetterman taking “everything to an extreme — and those extreme positions hurt us all.”
The Democrat, who swapped his trademark hoodie for a sober business suit, covering heavily-inked forearms, requested closed captioning to help him understand the questions.
Monitors displayed a real-time transcript of the moderators’ questions and responses from both candidates.
Captions
The captions, which lagged the questions by two or three seconds, didn’t impede a feisty exchange on the whole, although Fetterman tripped on his words more than once and struggled for coherence toward the end of the hour.
He hesitated conspicuously before giving a stumbling answer on his varying positions on fracking, but the flub looked more to do with a lack of preparation than comprehension.
The debate focused on campaign perennials such as the economy and crime, and both candidates cleaved to their public images — Fetterman as the authentic working-class champion of the US heartland and Oz as the polished, consummate performer, at ease in front of a TV audience of millions.
Oz, a 62-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, characterised his opponent as soft on crime — a hot-button issue in Pennsylvania, where urban violence has soared.
Fetterman has spent much of the last few months needling Oz on social media and in campaign ads as a “carpetbagger” who lived for decades in New Jersey and only moved to Pennsylvania in 2020.
He returned to the theme during the debate, listing tax breaks he said Oz had received on his many properties and hammering the Republican on his opposition to abortion rights.
Oz has said that he opposes federal limits on abortion but argues that states should be free to make rules. At one point he told the debate that choice to have an abortion should be a matter for “women, their doctors and local political leaders”.
That respoinse has already been seized upon by Fetterman and supporters as they attempt to maximise their vote ahead of the 8 November election.
Strategists from both parties believe the party that wins the Pennsylvania seat — vacated by retiring Republican Pat Toomey — will hold the Senate majority next year.
Fetterman held a commanding lead for much of the campaign but the race has tightened to a statistical tie as Republicans make ground on Democrats nationwide in the most recent polling.
The Keystone State narrowly backed Donald Trump for president in 2016 and voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
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