The candidates will meet in Harrisburg on Tuesday night and the Fetterman campaign appeared to tamp down expectations in a memo to reporters on Monday that referred to the fact the Democrat is still recovering from a stroke he suffered in May.
Fetterman will use a closed captioning system onstage to read moderators’ questions and the campaign noted he has “ongoing auditory processing challenges.”
The debate is likely to be contentious, with Fetterman’s health one potential topic as the Oz campaign has questioned his ability to serve following his stroke. Oz has also accused Fetterman of supporting “releasing convicted murderers back on the streets.”
The Democrat’s campaign has repeatedly taken aim at Oz for his longtime residence in New Jersey, his career as a TV doctor and celebrity surgeon, and reports that experiments Oz had supervised caused the death of more than 300 dogs as well as other animals.
Oz has denied he was involved in the animals’ deaths.
Political experts who spoke to Newsweek last week described some of the rhetoric used in the Pennsylvania Senate race as “juvenile” and an example of the “erosion of norms” in U.S. politics.
“Debates for state-level races rarely tip elections in one direction or the other. But given the tightness of the polls in the Oz-Fetterman contest, tonight could be an exception,” Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London’s Centre on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek on Tuesday.
“Two men will be on the stage tonight, but the reality is this: all eyes will be on Fetterman,” Gift said. “His main challenges are to prove he’s physically fit to serve in Washington and that he’s not the far-left extremist that Oz has painted him out to be.”
“Oz’s challenge will be to avoid overreaching. The last thing he wants to do is come off as unsympathetic, or worse, trying to exploit Fetterman’s health challenges. That’s already been an accusation that’s been thrown at Oz, so he doesn’t want to reinforce that image,” he went on.
Gift said that Fetterman “doesn’t have to win the debate outright, but he does need to prove he can hold his own with Oz. That could be hard, even in the best of circumstances.”
“Not only is Oz much more polished in these settings, but anyone who watched a Democratic primary debate in Pennsylvania knows that Fetterman doesn’t have a reputation as the most charismatic debater. He’s generally better on the stump, in interviews, and one-on-one,” Gift said.
“While Fetterman is trying to downplay expectation, that strategy may only goes so far, especially when there are so many questions about his physical well-being,” he added.
In a memo to journalists shared to Twitter by Politico’s Holly Otterbein on Monday, the Fetterman campaign appeared to acknowledge that Oz’s years on TV would give him an advantage.
“Let’s be clear about this match-up: Dr. Oz has been a professional TV personality for the last two decades,” the campaign said, adding: “We’ll admit — this isn’t John’s format” and pointing to Democratic primary debates earlier this year.
“If we’re all being honest, Oz clearly comes into Tuesday night with a huge built-in advantage,” the campaign’s memo said.
Oz has filmed more than 2,000 episodes of The Dr. Oz Show since 2009 and first became a nationally recognized figure for his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
The campaign stressed that Fetterman didn’t win the nomination because of his debate performances but because he “connects with Pennsylvanians from all corners of the commonwealth” and that the debate would show Oz to be a “scam artist who’s not even from here.”
On Monday, Brittany Yanick, communications director for the Oz campaign, told Newsweek in a statement that “Dr. Oz is criss-crossing the commonwealth and meeting with Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who want to see a change from the failed policies of the past.”
“We are going to win in November because Pennsylvanians can’t afford a Bernie Sanders socialist like John Fetterman who wants to release 1/3 of PA inmates, decriminalize all drugs, and eliminate life sentences for murderers,” Yanick said.
It remains to be seen if Oz and Fetterman will revisit their recent lines of attack in Tuesday night’s debate or if the debate will affect voters’ intentions in a race that could prove crucial to control of the Senate.
While Fetterman enjoyed a significant lead over Oz in polls throughout the summer, the Republican appears to have narrowed the gap with just two weeks until midterms.
Poll tracker FiveThirtyEight rates Fetterman as slightly favored to win the race with a 60 percent compared to a 40 percent chance for Oz. The gap between them has narrowed significantly over the last month with FiveThirtyEight’s analysis giving Fetterman an 83 percent chance of victory on September 24.
Newsweek has asked the Oz and Fetterman campaigns for comment.
