Pennsylvania Senate candidates are trading barbs over public safety, with Democrat John Fetterman responding to Republican claims that Fetterman is soft on crime in a new ad.
GOP nominee Mehmet Oz’s campaign shared an “Inmates for Fetterman” website on social media Tuesday, taking aim at the Pennsylvania Democrat for his tenure as chairman of the Board of Pardons in the Keystone State.
“Free-Them-All Fetterman voted to pardon multiple murderers and advocated for releasing one-third of PA’s inmate population,” his campaign tweeted. “We need to put victims and their families first, not criminals.”
Free-Them-All Fetterman voted to pardon multiple murderers and advocated for releasing one-third of PA’s inmate population. We need to put victims and their families first, not criminals. https://t.co/6mmStENpO9
— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) August 30, 2022
The site highlights a panel discussion in which Fetterman argued that Pennsylvania could release a third of inmates from its prisons without making the state less safe.
Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), released an ad making similar accusations as Oz, calling Fetterman “dangerously liberal on crime.”
“Shot a teenager in cold blood, killing him for money to buy heroin, and John Fetterman wanted him to walk free,” the narrator says in the clip. “As chairman of the Board of Pardons, Fetterman says he’s trying to get as many criminals out of prison as he can over the pleas of the victim’s family.”
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Fetterman was quick to clap back at the accusations, releasing an ad that looks to paint Oz, a celebrity doctor, as an elitist.
“Doc Oz and his Gucci loafers is attacking me on crime. Dr. Oz wouldn’t last two hours here in Braddock,” Fetterman says in the ad, referring to the town in which he previously served as mayor. “Public safety is why I ran for office. When two of my students were murdered, I ran for mayor to stop the violence. I worked side by side with the police, showed up at the crime scenes — we did whatever it took to fund our police and stopped gun deaths for five years.”
Democrats in swing districts and purple states have looked to fend off Republicans’ push to link candidates to the Left’s rhetoric on the “defund the police” movement, a strategy some within the GOP have credited with helping the party pick up more House seats than projected last cycle.
The race for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat has become increasingly contentious, with Fetterman’s team regularly trolling Oz on social media, most recently over a viral video of Oz discussing the price of crudite at a grocery store, an attempt to hit President Joe Biden on inflation.
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Oz, in turn, took heat for a statement taking aim at Fetterman’s health issues, with his communications director saying if Fetterman had “ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke.”
A Franklin & Marshall poll released last week showed the Pennsylvania Democrat with a 14-point advantage in the race.
