Dr. Oz Making a Comeback in the Polls vs. Fetterman

Walking along the crumbling sidewalk that lines his New Birth Ministry congregation in Duquesne, Pastor Jim Nelson greets Dr. Mehmet Oz with a hardy handshake and a pat on the back as Oz exits his SUV.

“I’d really like to take you for a little ride in the neighborhood before we get started with today’s roundtable,” the former police officer-turned-faith leader told the Republican candidate for Senate.

Without hesitation, Oz piles into the pastor’s van, and they head up the steep brick Pennsylvania street that has long served as the major artery of this Mon Valley city overlooking the Monongahela River.

WATCH: BYRON YORK CALLS FETTERMAN ATTENDANCE RECORDS ‘DAMAGING’

Once a booming steel town of 21,000 and the home of the mighty Duquesne Works, the majority-black population has shrunk to 5,100. The median household income is under $20,000, and more than 30% of the population lives below the poverty line.

Nelson points out the Kennywood amusement park’s steel roller coaster reflecting the sun on this cloudless day — less than a week earlier, the family-themed park was the scene of a triple shooting during the opening night of their annual Fall Festival that police said stemmed from an altercation between two groups of juveniles.

Crime in this city, along with drugs and inflation, are dominant concerns for voters.

Inside the rectory of New Birth Ministry, before Oz begins an hourslong roundtable with members of the community, Nelson will deliver some tough realities to Oz about policing, living, and trying to carve out a life with a family in cities like the one he calls home. But he begins with a little praise for the candidate who showed up.

“This is extremely gratifying to me. … Having talked to this man, he is not your average politician as far as politicians go. He is a man who wants to do the right thing,” he said.

Eight months after bounding onto the stage of Giannilli’s II restaurant in Westmoreland County for his first event as a candidate for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania, the Cleveland-born heart surgeon has been digging himself out of a poll rut and slowly making progress. Democrat John Fetterman’s lead has gone from double digits to the margin of error in some recent polls, and on Oct. 4, the Cook Political Report moved the race from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up.” Oz’s campaign adjustments have clearly made a difference.

The last time Pennsylvanians had a celebrity candidate was when former Pittsburgh Steeler great Lynn Swann ran for governor in 2006, so in the early campaign, his town halls had an evanescent fame-induced buzz but little of the retail politicking maturity that voters are seeing now.

Between then and now, he’s dodged cow pies at tiny farm shows in Blair and Huntingdon counties and walked the business districts in Scranton and Johnstown and in the suburbs of Philadelphia counties. He’s met with law enforcement in tiny boroughs and large cities and families in suburban school districts, and he’s spent hours in the black communities listening to their plans for hope in crime-ridden neighborhoods politicians only usually visit for a photo-op.

In Erie the day before, as Oz walked along a beaten-down section of Parade Street, a man pulled up alongside and remarked, “I ain’t voting for him — I am a damn Democrat — but I’m sure glad he is here to see what is happening in my city.” Ten minutes later, after talking to him about drugs and crime on the east side, he was a bit less certain about his vote.

Oz said such conversations with voters are what has most improved his campaign from its early stumbles.

“To be good at whatever you do in life, you have to approach it with a greater purpose. When I listen to people’s concerns about their community but also their hopes and aspirations that became my purpose pretty quickly, helping to solve those problems is a call to serve my state,” Oz told the Washington Examiner magazine.

The expectation that he would evolve into a fire-breathing populist because of the endorsement he received from former President Donald Trump has never materialized. G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Millersville University, said he wasn’t surprised. “He is a professional, much like Glenn Youngkin was in his run for governor of Virginia but also in how Youngkin has governed. Both have found a way to be their own candidate while still receiving the former president’s support,” he said.

Born in Cleveland to immigrant parents, Oz rose to academic achievement, attending Harvard University for business and the University of Pennsylvania for his medical degree and becoming an esteemed heart surgeon in high demand — he performed a heart transplant on Roger Altman, deputy treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton, who just last week praised Oz for saving his life.

He achieved celebrity status when he began appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show as a medical contributor, then in his own right with his show and a series of New York Times bestsellers.

Madonna said that part of Oz’s slow-out-of-the-gate start had to do with the barrage of attacks on him by Republican primary opponent David McCormick in the spring. “That was a $60 million drag on his reputation he has still yet to fully recover from fully,” Madonna said of Oz’s disapproval rating among voters, which has been at about 50%.

Madonna said Oz has done everything right to redeem himself: “While Fetterman battered him on social media over silly memes and used celebrities to make fun of him, Oz went into the interior of the state and worked.”

The question, Madonna said, is: “Will it be enough to overcome his negatives?”

His opponent, Fetterman, has benefited from some things beyond Oz’s control, notably a fawning press.

Fetterman, the son of wealthy York County parents, attended Harvard and lived off his parents’ support as the mayor of Braddock until the age of 49. Crime went up, the population shrunk dramatically, and the heart of the community, the hospital, closed under his watch.

He and the community group he runs, Braddock Redux, were sued 67 times for $30,000 in unpaid taxes and liens on properties they owned in Braddock.

When he had a stroke in May, Fetterman waited days to tell the press and the governor’s office. He failed to reveal the heart condition that caused his stroke five years ago, when he was diagnosed.

He has made a habit of conducting interviews over Google Meet rather than in person, though he’ll have to adjust when he debates Oz in late October — less than two weeks before Election Day and over a month after voting will have begun.

Oz has another obstacle: his own party’s ticket. State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a controversial candidate who has backed Trump’s false attacks on the electoral integrity of his loss to Joe Biden, is running for governor. While Oz is open with the press, Mastriano isn’t, though Madonna said he doesn’t expect Mastriano to be a drag on the ticket because of Pennsylvanians’ history of split-ticket voting.

“In 2020, Biden won the state, but down-ballot Republicans won just about everything else: two statewide row office races, new state Senate and state House seats, and kept two House Republicans in Bucks and Cumberland counties, [which] they were widely expected to lose,” he said.

Oz said that when all is said and done, this race won’t be won on social media: “If I have earned the voters’ trust, then it will be won in places like Duquesne or Johnstown or Erie. You have to look in the eye of voters and listen, and if I’ve done that well, there is your answer.”

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Salena Zito is a national political reporter for the Washington Examiner.