Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, will have a plane running banner ads against Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz at the Jersey Shore.Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images; Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
“Hey Dr. Oz, Welcome Home To N.J.!”
That’s the message you may see if you’re at the Jersey Shore this weekend, part of the latest series of ads from Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Fetterman, a Democrat who is the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, is running against celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican who lived in New Jersey for more than 30 years.
The report says that Fetterman’s campaign will be running an Oz-directed banner ad from a plane flying over the Shore from Cape May to Brigantine. The hope is to draw attention from vacationing Pennsylvanians.
While Oz has long lived in Cliffside Park with his wife Lisa, he announced in 2021 that he would be running for a United States Senate seat in Pennsylvania, which is famously a “battleground” state in elections.
Oz said he had moved to Bryn Athyn in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He registered to vote when living at his in-laws’ home there in 2020 and later bought a home in the town, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
During the campaign, Fetterman, 52, who grew up in York, Pennsylvania, has seized on the apparent disconnect between Oz’s history of residency and his political ambitions in the Keystone State. He recently accused Oz of filming a campaign video in his Cliffside Park house.
Pro tip: don’t film an ad for your PA senate campaign from your mansion in New Jersey. https://t.co/D9BDweZmym pic.twitter.com/pld8RLmWYv
“Pro tip: don’t film an ad for your PA senate campaign from your mansion in New Jersey,” Fetterman tweeted, comparing the background of the video to an image from a 2020 People magazine feature on his Jersey home.
The Daytime Emmy winner hosted “The Dr. Oz Show” from 2009 to January 2022.
Oz, 62, a native of Cleveland, Ohio who grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, has long called a six-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion atop the Palisades in Cliffside Park home. The cardiothoracic surgeon, a former professor at Columbia University, first gained widespread fame as a medical expert on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Oz studied for his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and received an MBA from the college’s Wharton School the same year he graduated medical school, in 1986.
The Fetterman campaign is also set to run TV ads in Pennsylvania showing Oz’s Cliffside Park mansion and video of him kissing his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that call Oz “Doc Hollywood,” the Post-Gazette report says.
“Save your money,” Fetterman tells Oz in the ad. “Pennsylvania’s not for sale.”
Fetterman’s current pinned tweet features a campaign video that contains People magazine footage of Oz at his home in Cliffside Park and notes other residences in Florida, Maine, Turkey and New York.
“As a general rule of thumb, celebrity TV doctors with over $100 million in asset$ + several properties NOT IN PA don’t usually fight for working people,” Fetterman said in the tweet.
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter.
Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.
Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your California Privacy Rights (User Agreement updated 1/1/21. Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement updated 7/1/2022).
© 2022 Advance Local Media LLC. All rights reserved (About Us). The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.
Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.