A day after he rallied with President Donald Trump and state Sen. Doug Mastriano in heavily Republican Latrobe, Mehmet Oz held an event with centrist Republicans in Bucks, a perennial swing county.
And at a Democratic rally a few miles away, Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman rallied with a crowd calling both of the GOP opponents extremists. Meanwhile, Mastriano made final pitches in Philadelphia.
The Sunday before Pennsylvania’s critical midterm elections was a blitz of campaigning in the Southeast region, a day after three presidents stumped for their candidates in the key races.
Oz’s conversation at the Washington Crossing Inn with Republican Sen. Susan Collins and U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick centered on the need for balance and bipartisanship in Congress, particularly to help small-business owners who were also in attendance.
“I want to bring balance to Washington,” Oz told the small group of business owners. “And John Fetterman takes the extreme position over and over again.”
Fitzpatrick called Oz pragmatic.
“We hear a lot about threats to democracy I’ll tell you what the biggest threat to democracy is, it’s hyper partisanship,” Fitzpatrick said.
Collins said Oz would bring “balance,” saying, “He will listen to both sides.”
The conversation largely hinged on problems businesses have faced — including supply chain challenges, labor shortages, inflated prices of goods, taxes, and crime.
“I lived through a time where we had an abundance of cars. … All we did was discount,” said Fred Beans of Fred Beans Auto Group. “Now there is this tremendous shortage.”
Oz for months has aimed to project a more moderate political image, focusing heavily on the Philadelphia suburbs. Three days before the election, he appeared at the Trump rally, where Trump repeated lies about the 2020 election being stolen. Oz has said he would have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election.
Collins told reporters after the event that she did not think it was mixed messaging for Oz to appear onstage with Trump a day before his conversation with her.
“I think it shows he can work well with people having a variety of viewpoints, and that’s what we need in Washington,” she said. “We need people who are willing to cross party lines. We need people with different backgrounds.”
Collins named Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia as an example of a Democrat who has worked across the aisle.
“But John Fetterman has said, ‘I will not work with Joe Manchin,’” Collins said. “He’s also said, ‘I’ll be the 51st vote for Chuck Schumer.’ That’s not what we need to solve problems.”
Collins, a Republican and abortion-rights supporter, has said she would codify in federal legislation the provisions in Roe v. Wade. Oz has a more restrictive stance on abortion: He’s said he only supports abortion in cases or rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
“What Dr. Oz has been very clear in saying is that he does not think there should be a federal anti-abortion law,” Collins said.
“We don’t have exactly the same position, but the position he’s embraced is very much a mainstream position as opposed to those who would ban an abortion at any time or allow abortion at any time,” she said.
Shapiro, Fetterman rally in Bucks
About 10 minutes from Washington Crossing, Shapiro and Fetterman held a joint outdoor campaign rally at Bucks County Community College.
Supporters of the Democrats walked through a crowd of about 50 Mastriano supporters lining the pathway into the rally. The Mastriano supporters shouted “pedophile lover!” and “F--- Joe Biden,” as people entered.
The rally crowd of about 700 gathered as the sun set, with the Fetterman and Shapiro buses parked in the background of the campus in Newtown, in critical Bucks County.
Sen. Bob Casey slammed Oz for appearing with Trump.
“Last night he had a choice about where he would stand, and he stood with the former president and the candidate for governor,” Casey said to boos from the crowd. “Mr. Mastriano and Mr. Trump are extreme candidates, and the candidate for Senate was standing with them.”
Fetterman noted the importance of closely divided Bucks County in the race.
“This is one of the biggest races in the nation, and you wanna know why? There’s 100 million reasons why,” Fetterman said. “That’s how much they’ve spent trying to destroy me. But we’re still standing, and I’m gonna need every one of you to go out and have your plan, get your friends, get your families all ready to vote.”
Shapiro, who ended a six-day bus tour with more than 25 stops in Bucks, told the crowd, “Each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines to get into the game and do our part.”
Steve Nolan, a Republican from Bucks County who spent 30 years in the military, said he’s backing both Democrats.
“I don’t have a choice,” Nolan said, saying he thinks lies about election fraud are a threat to democracy.
Claudia Morris, an actress and singer from Newtown, is a lifelong Democrat who usually votes but she called this election’s importance “through the roof.”
“I’m very afraid of Mastriano and Oz,” she said. “Very afraid.”
Mastriano campaigns in Philly
Mastriano, in a pair of campaign stops Sunday in Philadelphia, stuck to his stump speech of blaming Democrats like Shapiro for crime in the city while noting the effect of inflation everywhere else.
Mastriano, well-received in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1, still lapsed frequently into the culture-war issues that helped him win the May primary.
He circled back to gender and sexuality identity issues repeatedly, vowing to prevent trans children from competing in sports for the gender they identify with while decrying “the sexualization of children.”
Mastriano blamed Gov. Tom Wolf and Shapiro for COVID-19 shutdowns and vowed to end the teaching of “critical race theory,” a catch-all term conservatives use to refer to lessons about race or diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
And Mastriano repeatedly insisted that the news media he has refused to talk to for 10 months has never given him a fair shake in reporting on his campaign.
The Republican nominee, a state senator from Franklin County, avoided mention of his vow during the primary campaign to ban all abortions in Pennsylvania or his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential elections in the state.
Shapiro, the state Attorney General from Abington, has used those issues and a massive fundraising advantage to paint Mastriano in televisions commercials as too extreme to be governor.
”He’s the extremist,” Mastriano told a standing-room only crowd in a South Philly catering hall. “He has to call someone else that.”
Mastriano returned to attacking Shapiro as an “elitist,” claiming the Democrat had a privilege upbringing and noting that he sends his children to a private school.
Mastriano brought along on his tour of Southeastern Pennsylvania in the closing days of the election Mercedes Schlapp, a former communications adviser to former President Donald Trump.
Schlapp picked up on Mastriano’s frequent jibes about Shapiro’s height, calling him “a little dictator.”
While Mastriano trails in most polls, Schlapp insisted the race was still winnable for Republicans.
”This race is not over,” she said. “We have a chance to win this in this moment in time, and you’re going to see the biggest surprise of your life.”
Vince Fenerty, chair of the city’s Republican City Committee, at both the South Philly and Northeast Philly events, invoked the late Frank Rizzo as the kind of politician whose supporters would also support Mastriano.
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