Celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive David McCormick are each running to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate and are involved in a brutal campaign to see which candidate will be on the GOP ballot in November.
After several months of courting, Donald Trump finally chose Dr. Oz as his candidate of choice last weekend. But if anything, Trump’s endorsement has only spurred McCormick to make a greater effort.
Both men can boast of Trump loyalists as key staff members. Both men have good relationships with the former president. McCormick’s wife, Dina Powell McCormick, served as deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration.
But Oz had an ace up his sleeve; Trump’s wife Melania took a liking to Dr. and Mrs. Oz during several cozy dinners at Mar-a-Largo and that apparently was one of the deciding factors why Trump endorsed the good doctor.
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Oz, who holds dual Turkish/U.S. citizenship, and McCormick, a West Point grad, Gulf War combat veteran, and Treasury Department official in former President George W. Bush’s administration, have been going at it hammer and tongs over the airwaves trying to prove who’s the better conservative.
The two candidates have traded fire for months over a host of issues, including who is tougher or softer on China, charges that McCormick outsourced Pennsylvania jobs, Oz’s dual citizenship in Turkey, and most recently, over fracking. And outside groups backing each candidate have spent tens of millions of dollars in recent months to launch attack ads against McCormick and Oz in a race that’s become the most expensive Senate showdown in the country.
The narrator in Oz’s new ad charges that “Trump endorsed Dr. Oz for Senate because Trump knows who the real conservative is who’s going to shake up Washington. It’s not David McCormick, the liberal, pro-Biden, pro-China, Wall Street Insider.”
McCormick isn’t exactly a liberal. But there have been charges made by Oz that McCormick shipped jobs to China and has questioned the efficacy of fracking.
Meanwhile, McCormick shot back that Oz is a “fraud.”
The spot uses old clips of Oz praising Hillary Clinton as “one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.” And Oz is also seen complimenting Dr. Anthony Fauci – the chief medical adviser to President Biden and a figure who’s been repeatedly vilified by many conservatives for his words and actions during the coronavirus pandemic – as “a very disciplined leader. He’s a wonderful scientist.”
Oz is also seen in the McCormick ad saying in old clips that “we need to work with China” and “I love working in China,” as well as asking “how do we keep guns out of the wrong person’s hands?”
An Oz campaign spokesperson said “Dr. Oz has called for Anthony Fauci to be fired over the draconian lockdowns and mandates that hurt so many Pennsylvanians. Hillary Clinton showed herself over time to be one of the most crooked politicians.”
The spokesperson also claimed that “liberal Wall Street insider David McCormick can’t defend his attacks on President Trump and defense of Communist China so he is resorting to lying about Dr. Oz’s record with these selectively edited clips.”
According to the latest Franklin and Marshall poll, Oz edges out McCormick by 16 to 15 percent in the crowded field. Given that about half the GOP electorate is still undecided or says they could change their minds, this race has a long way to go.
The primary is on May 17.
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