Guest Opinion: Oz more connected to Southeastern PA than Fetterman

As he, for the second time, seeks to become a United States senator, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman claims that he only got involved in politics to fight crime in “his city,” Braddock PA, after two of his students were gunned down. Fetterman, so he implies, is not interested in status or money. He just wants to help people. The truth is, however, that Fetterman spent his entire adult life deliberately creating a narrative that he would use to achieve his ambition of getting elected to the United States Senate.

After growing up in York and earning an MBA in Connecticut, Fetterman moved to Western Pennsylvania, where, through AmeriCorps, he helped students prepare to take the GED test, while also working for an insurance company. Then, a couple of years later, Fetterman left Western Pennsylvania to pursue a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, before returning to Western Pennsylvania and running for mayor of Braddock.

Obviously, Fetterman did not go to Harvard just so that he could serve as mayor of Braddock, which paid only $150 a month. If Fetterman, selflessly, just wanted to help underprivileged students learn to read, why didn’t he pursue an education program at West Chester? Why didn’t he become a reading specialist? Why did Fetterman go to Harvard to study government if he had no interest in becoming a career politician? How did he end up in Braddock, anyway? He is not even from there. Fetterman moved to Braddock to launch his political career because a “Bernie Sanders” liberal would find much greater success, politically, in Braddock than in York. With the help of his parents who gave him $54,000 in 2015, Fetterman put everything he had into serving as mayor and at developing his political narrative, instead of working for a living.

For a man who just wants to help his city and Pennsylvania, John Fetterman shows tenacious ambition. After unsuccessfully running for the United States Senate in 2016, Fetterman ran for lieutenant governor in 2018, and now, he is running for the United States Senate, again.

He relentlessly attacks his opponent, Dr. Oz. In one attack ad, Fetterman claims that Dr. Oz, a white heart surgeon, would not last two hours in Braddock, which has a predominantly Black population (70.83% in the 2020 census).

Though it is not Braddock, Dr. Oz recently walked along Kensington Avenue, the epicenter of the opioid crisis in Philadelphia, and encouraged inflicted individuals to seek help, while Fetterman campaigned from his home near Pittsburgh — six hours away — by running expensive television advertisements in the Philadelphia region, barking, “(Dr. Oz is) not one of us!”.

Much of Fetterman’s campaign urges Pennsylvania voters to reject Dr. Oz because he is not from “here.” Of course, this claim ignores the fact that Dr. Oz attended college in Philadelphia, his wife is from Bryn Athyn, and that he bought a house in Montgomery County. Ironically, according to Fetterman’s argument, nobody in Southeastern Pennsylvania should vote for Fetterman because he, himself has never lived in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Braddock is about a six-hour drive from “here.” Even if we ignore the fact that Dr. Oz now lives in Montgomery County, which he does, Dr. Oz’s New Jersey house is probably less than two-hours away — three times closer to us than Fetterman’s house.

While Dr. Oz has strong connections to Southeastern Pennsylvania, Fetterman has none. John Fetterman is not one of us.

Michael Baluk lives in Warminster.

This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Guest Opinion: Oz more connected to Southeastern PA than Fetterman