US midterm elections: John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz spar in closely-watched debate
- Race in Pennsylvania will help decide whether Democrats retain control of the Senate
- Debate represented a major political test for Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in May
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A heavily-tattooed recovering stroke patient and a celebrity surgeon locked horns in the only debate scheduled for one of the most closely-watched US midterm election races.
There was no shortage of spectacle as the imposing 2.06-metre Democrat John Fetterman and Republican former daytime TV mainstay Mehmet Oz made their pitches to voters in Pennsylvania’s US Senate race.
The pair sparred for an hour on Tuesday in state capital Harrisburg in a high stakes encounter for both parties, with Republicans needing to flip just one seat to prize the upper chamber of Congress from Democratic control.
Fetterman’s team had been doing some expectation-setting amid the 53-year-old’s comeback from a stroke in May.
The lieutenant governor is making an encouraging physical recovery but struggles to grasp some spoken words and occasionally to access words when speaking, according to his doctors.
“If he’s on TV, he’s lying,” Fetterman said of Oz early in the debate, accusing his opponent of misleading voters about his record and complaining that the doctor has “never let me forget” about the stroke.
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He apologised preemptively for any words he might miss but added that his campaign was about “fighting for everyone in Pennsylvania that never got knocked down.”
Oz opened with criticism of Fetterman taking “everything to an extreme – and those extreme positions hurt us all”.
The Democrat, who swapped his trademark hoodie for a sober business suit, covering heavily-inked forearms, requested closed captioning to help him understand the questions.
Monitors displayed a real-time transcript of the moderators’ questions and Oz’s answers.
The captions, which lagged the questions by two or three seconds, did not impede a feisty exchange on the whole, although Fetterman tripped on his words more than once and struggled for coherence toward the end of the hour.
He hesitated conspicuously before giving a stumbling answer on his varying positions on fracking, but the flub looked more to do with a lack of preparation than comprehension.
The debate focused on campaign perennials such as the economy and crime, and both candidates cleaved to their public images – Fetterman as the authentic working-class champion of the US heartland and Oz as the polished, consummate performer, at ease in front of a TV audience of millions.
Oz, a 62-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, characterised his opponent as soft on crime – a hot-button issue in Pennsylvania, where urban violence has soared.
Fetterman has spent much of the last few months needling Oz on social media and in campaign ads as a “carpetbagger” who lived for decades in New Jersey and only moved to Pennsylvania in 2020.
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He returned to the theme during the debate, listing tax breaks he said Oz had received on his many properties and hammering the Republican on his opposition to abortion rights.
Strategists from both parties believe the party that wins the Pennsylvania seat – vacated by retiring Republican Pat Toomey – will hold the Senate majority next year.
Fetterman held a commanding lead for much of the campaign but the race has tightened to a statistical tie as Republicans make ground on Democrats nationwide in the most recent polling.
The Keystone State narrowly backed Donald Trump for president in 2016 and voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
Additional reporting by Reuters
