A political committee backing Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz has released an ad targeting his Democratic opponent John Fetterman over the time he had pulled a gun on a Black jogger and wrongly accused him of a suspected crime.
Political committee American Leadership Action, which backs Dr Oz, said in an email to NBC News that it had launched a 30-second television ad on Tuesday about the incident on networks with significant African American viewership, including Black Entertainment Television, the Oprah Winfrey Network, MSNBC and ESPN.
A 15-second digital ad has also been designed to reach Black voters on their smartphones and social media feeds.
The incident took place in 2013 when Mr Fetterman was the mayor of Braddock, a Pittsburgh-area town.
Mr Fetterman claimed he had heard gunfire and saw a man running after which he chased the man down with his shotgun and detained him until police arrived.
Chris Miyares, the jogger, was found at the time to have committed no crime.
While Mr Fetterman said he made a mistake, he has not offered an apology.
Mr Fetterman’s opponents in the Democrat primary contest had also gone after the same incident as well, reported the Associated Press.
His Democrat rival Conor Lamb had said during the primaries in April that Mr Fetterman skipped candidate forums to avoid talking about the incident.
Mr Fetterman has not yet spoken about the resurfacing of the incident through the American Leadership Action attack ad.
Miyares, incarcerated for an unrelated crime, told The Philadelphia Inquirer in April last year that he had forgiven Mr Fetterman and supports him.
“I hope he gets to be a Senator,” Miyares had said through a letter to the outlet at the time in a quote he had underlined thrice. He also said it was “inhumane to believe one mistake should define a man’s life”.
The $500,000 ad campaign comes as Dr Oz has struggled to gain traction in the high-profile Pennsylvania race.
On Tuesday at a press conference in Philadelphia, Dr Oz questioned Mr Fetterman’s readiness for office and criticised his reluctance to speak to reporters after suffering a stroke in May.
Activists like Rev Mark Kelly Tyler, a top Philadelphia Democratic organiser who helped turn out Black voters to aid Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Pennsylvania said he had predicted the issue would be weaponised by the Republicans.
“I expected this ad as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west,” he was quoted as saying.
