HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon best known as the host of TV’s Dr. Oz Show after rocketing to fame on Oprah Winfrey's show, is planning to run for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat as a Republican, according to three people familiar with his plans.
Should Oz run, he would bring his unrivaled name recognition and wealth to a wide-open race that is expected to among the nation’s most competitive and could determine control of the Senate in next year's election.
Oz — a longtime New Jersey resident — would enter a Republican field that is resetting with an influx of candidates and a new opportunity to appeal to voters loyal to former President Donald Trump, now that the candidate endorsed by Trump has just exited the race.
Oz, 61, in recent days has told associates and Republicans in Pennsylvania of his plans, according to the three people who spoke to The Associated Press. Two people were told by Oz directly, while the other was briefed on a separate conversation. Two of the people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Montgomery County's GOP chair, Elizabeth Preate Havey, said Oz told her Friday that he will run. Separately, he spoke with Allegheny County's GOP chair, Sam DeMarco, who said Oz did not directly say he will run, but “he left me with no doubt that he is going to be running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.”
Publicly, Oz has only said through a TV show spokesperson that he had received encouragement to run and that he has lived and voted in Pennsylvania since last year.
The announcement could come Tuesday night on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, which Hannity previewed by saying that Oz would appear on it and that “he has a huge announcement. Hint: think midterm election.”
As one of the nation’s biggest presidential electoral prizes, Pennsylvania put Democrat Joe Biden over the top in last year’s election. His 1 percentage point victory put the swing state back in Democratic hands after Trump won it even more narrowly in 2016.
Oz’s resume is dizzying: heart surgeon, author of New York Times bestsellers, Emmy-winning TV show host, radio talk show host, presidential appointee, founder of a national non-profit to educate teens about healthy habits and self-styled ambassador for wellness.
He was appointed by Trump to the presidential Council on Sports, Fitness and Health, guest-hosted the Jeopardy! game show and helped save a dying man at Newark Liberty International Airport last winter.
Oz may have to explain why he isn’t running for office in New Jersey, where he has lived for the past two decades before he began voting in Pennsylvania’s elections this year by absentee ballot, registered to his in-laws’ address in suburban Philadelphia.
His longtime home is above the Hudson River in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, overlooking Manhattan, where he films his TV show and practices medicine. Oz became a household name after gaining fame as a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show before starting his own show in 2009.
Oz’s appetite to expand his business portfolio is voracious, with critics saying he often promotes questionable products and medical advice.
He has been dogged by accusations that he is a charlatan selling “quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain,” a group of doctors wrote in 2015 in a letter calling for his firing from Columbia University’s medical school. He wasn’t fired.
Oz began making regular appearances on Fox News after the start of the pandemic, and in the spring of 2020 came under fire for comments suggesting that reopening schools might be worth the extra deaths, because it “may only cost us 2% to 3% in terms of total mortality.”
Researchers from the University of Alberta found in 2014 that, of 80 randomly selected recommendations from Oz’s shows, often dietary advice, roughly half was unsupported by evidence, or contradicted by it.
In any case, Oz could be part of an influx of Republican candidates who, until recently at least, did not live in Pennsylvania, but, perhaps more importantly, are rich.
As Oz moves to enter the race, a hedge fund CEO who lives in Connecticut, David McCormick, is working his way across Pennsylvania this week meeting with Republican officials in expectation of returning to his native state to run.
The most prominent Republicans already running are conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, real estate investor Jeff Bartos and Carla Sands, Trump’s wealthy ambassador to Denmark and fundraiser who has recently returned to her native Pennsylvania after spending most of the past four decades in California.
Of them, none has won elective office before, and only Bartos has run statewide in Pennsylvania, as lieutenant governor on the GOP’s losing gubernatorial ticket in 2018.
The Democratic field has been stable since August, and features candidates with far more electoral experience — although far less personal wealth — than the Republican field. Their best-known candidates are John Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb of suburban Pittsburgh.
Oz was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a heart surgeon who emigrated from Turkey.
He attended high school in Delaware and Harvard University as a college undergraduate, also playing football there, and served in the Turkish army to maintain his dual citizenship.
Oz’s wife is also the daughter of a prominent heart surgeon, and the two met in Philadelphia through their fathers when Oz attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.
———
Tucker reported from Washington. Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter.
