In August, Dr. Mehmet Oz's Pennsylvania Senate candidacy seemed doomed. The surgeon/television personality was sinking in the polls as Democrats bashed him for not living in the state, for retaining his Turkish citizenship, and for what even Republicans acknowledged was his awkward inauthenticity. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed to question Oz's viability. A bump in the polls for Democrats made the seat being vacated by Sen. Pat Toomey appear to be a likely pickup for President Joe Biden's party in its desperate battle to hold control of the Senate.
Yet, as the most recent polls show, Oz has edged back into contention. The Democrats' late summer upswing may turn out to be fool's gold in what was always going to be a bad year for the party in power. The Pennsylvania Senate race may actually be decided by an issue that ought to scare Democrats across the nation. A surge in crime, and murder in particular, has become impossible to ignore—and Oz's opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, has embraced the cause of releasing murderers from prison.
Oz has suffered from the heightened scrutiny of a general election race, but so has Fetterman. Since suffering a stroke in May, concerns about the latter's fitness for office have arisen. He has limited public appearances and sometimes appears unable to complete his sentences when he does go out. The fact that he was supported by his wealthy parents for most of his life, and that the small town where he was mayor was not the success story that he claimed it to be, has also undermined his image as an ordinary guy in a hoodie who could get things done.
More pressing is Fetterman's record on police and crime.
Fetterman ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 in large measure because he was convinced that one of the country's biggest problems is that too many people are in prison. Chairing the state's Board of Pardons came with the otherwise insignificant job. After winning the position, Fetterman went to work seeking the release of as many people convicted for second degree and felony murder—in which the convicted persons are often accomplices—as possible. Two such released convicts, who had been serving life sentences, are now working on Fetterman's campaign and often appear with him.
Fetterman represents his efforts as being in line with the First Step Act, which was senior presidential advisor Jared Kushner's personal cause, passed by the Trump administration. That criminal justice reform bill sought, among other things, to erase racial inequities in sentencing drug offenders. Oz also supports the Trump bill, but points out that treating crack dealers no worse than cocaine dealers is not the same thing as the jailbreak for murderers that Pennsylvania saw on Fetterman's watch.
The problem goes beyond the dubious proposition that making sentences for murder less harsh advances the cause of justice. Democrats like Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner—one of the most prominent examples of George Soros' pet project of bankrolling left-wing local prosecutors—are in denial about how their efforts to scale back prosecutions and hamstring the police resulted in a catastrophic increase in violent crime. The DA's claim that GOP-run states have a higher or comparable murder rate ignores the fact that those numbers are largely the result of the policies of liberal mayors and prosecutors in blue enclaves.
Viral videos of disturbing crimes are having a greater impact than ads mocking Oz over his homes in New Jersey. Since the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020, anti-police and pro-criminal policies have undermined the public's confidence in the willingness of authorities to protect them.
Left-wingers portray any focus on crime as right-wing race baiting. Yet African-American voters are the main victims of this tactic; it is their neighborhoods that are being made unsafe. It remains to be seen whether they will turn out in the huge numbers Democrats need to elect Fetterman. Kushner was wrong to think his bill would generate black support for Trump—the small yet significant shift to the right among minority voters in recent election cycles reflects a desire for tougher, rather than weaker, law enforcement.
Just as raging inflation, a tottering economy, and Biden's incompetence are factors that remain burdens for Democrats this fall, a crime wave manufactured by liberal ideologues like Fetterman could prove decisive in determining control of the Senate.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
