Dr. Oz is running for Senate in Pennsylvania.
This opening ad, which will begin airing on television, takes aim at the government’s response to Covid, a topic Mehmet Oz, a Republican, has spoken about in interviews over the course of the pandemic.
“Covid has shown us that our system is broken. We lost too many lives, too many jobs and too many opportunities because Washington got it wrong. They took away our freedom without making us safer, and tried to kill our spirit and our dignity,” Oz said in his campaign ad.
According to his website, among the issues his campaign plans to champion are lowering drug prices, bringing back jobs from China and establishing a “secure border.”
Campaign manager Casey Contres said that Oz will self-fund part of his campaign and is planning to “put significant resources” into the battleground state race.
The launch of Oz’s campaign comes a week after Sean Parnell, the GOP candidate who was endorsed by Donald Trump, suspended his Senate campaign after losing legal custody of his children. As the Republicans seek to take back the Senate majority, Senator Pat Toomey’s retirement in Pennsylvania makes the open seat crucial for them to defend in 2022.
According to his campaign, Oz has lived in Pennsylvania since December 2020, renting a home in Bryn Athyn owned by his wife’s family. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for medical and business school.
One Republican who spoke to Oz in the last week said the celebrity doctor tried to lower down the concerns that he doesn’t live in the state: “He tried to make a case for why he’s a resident of Pennsylvania, and that he’s been traveling around the state for the last couple years. I haven’t heard that, listening to people and seeing what the issues are.”
Chair of the Allegheny County GOP, Sam DeMarco talked with Oz recently and said that he “came away very impressed.”
“He talked about how the system was broken, how we were so divided, and he thought he was somebody who had the ability and the desire to step in and try to fix it. I asked him about his ties to Pennsylvania. He spoke with me about his youth growing up only four miles from the Pennsylvania border, and how as a youth almost everything they did, they did in Pennsylvania,” said DeMarco.