Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman has accepted an invitation to debate his Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz on Oct. 25 after months of side-stepping debate offers.
The date Fetterman’s campaign agreed to is not among the six debate opportunities Oz had accepted in recent months, though Oz’s campaign said he would agree to it if several conditions were met.
OZ TAUNTS FETTERMAN WITH ANNOUNCEMENT OF SIXTH DEBATE
“We said from the start that we’d do a debate, which John reiterated very clearly again last week. Enough distractions, it’s time to talk about the issues,” Rebecca Katz, senior adviser to the Fetterman campaign, said in a statement. “While John will be debating Dr. Oz next month, Oz doesn’t have to wait that long to be honest with Pennsylvania voters about where he really stands on abortion. It’s a simple question, doctor: Would you vote for the Republicans’ national abortion ban, or would you vote against it?”
Oz’s campaign said that Fetterman’s team asked for closed captioning during the event and two practice sessions in the Harrisburg studio so he could get used to working with the system.
After suffering a stroke the day before the primary election, Fetterman has faced questions about his ability to serve in the Senate as he slowly returned to the campaign trail. The stroke left Fetterman with lingering auditory processing and speech issues.
In light of these accommodations, the Oz campaign made three demands: that the audience is informed at the beginning of the debate that Fetterman is using closed captioning to understand the moderators and Oz, that the questions put to Fetterman during the practice sessions have nothing to do with real questions that will come up during the debate, and that the duration is lengthened from 60 minutes to 90 minutes.
“Doctor Oz has accepted seven different debates throughout September and October. Today, after being hit with massive criticism from state and national editorials and commentators for ducking, John Fetterman finally agreed to one debate … that was originally scheduled for October 5th,” Casey Contres, Oz’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “It’s a debate that Fetterman insisted be delayed until only two weeks remain in the campaign, to keep voters in the dark as long as possible. And it’s a debate in which Fetterman insisted on accommodations for his health condition, accommodations that are not permitted on the U.S. Senate floor.”
The debate will air live through Nexstar Television to the entire state. It falls two weeks before Election Day but after early voting begins in most counties. According to Fetterman’s release, 17% of voters had already cast a ballot by this date in 2020. However, this percentage could have been unusually high due to the pandemic.
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The Washington Post wrote in a Monday editorial that Fetterman needs to debate Oz more than once in order to assure voters of his recovery and called his perceived reluctance to debate “unsettling.”
“He stammers, appears confused and keeps his remarks short. He has held no news conferences,” the editorial board wrote. “Mr. Fetterman is asking voters for a six-year contract without giving them enough information to make sound judgments about whether he’s up for such a demanding job.”
