You probably won’t find many Trump fans outright rooting for Fetterman to win, but it’s easy to imagine a lot of populist Republicans not feeling particularly invested in the need to help Oz win this race. It’s already clear that outside Republican and right-leaning groups see Oz as a sinking ship and are choosing to focus their efforts elsewhere. Right now, Oz looks like a much bigger underdog than J.D. Vance or Herschel Walker or maybe even Blake Masters.
As Oprah’s favorite doctor and a longtime daytime talk show host, Oz jumped into the race with no natural constituency in the Republican Party. If he hadn’t been endorsed by Trump, most Trump voters probably never would have given him a second look. Some Pennsylvania Trump fans were pretty open about their belief that Trump had endorsed the wrong candidate.
Oz isn’t really a part of the Republican “establishment” either. He has little or no past association with conservative causes. He was critical of efforts to restrict abortion and heartbeat laws, lamented that the CDC “is NOT funded to study gun violence in this country. It’s time we treat shootings as a public health problem.” He also criticized fracking, and GLAAD praised him for “allowing the audience to hear probably the healthiest medical opinion of transgender identity ever broadcast.” Up until the moment he announced he was running for Senate as a Republican, most people would have assumed he was a Democrat.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member