It’s official – Dr. Mehmet Oz is the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania.

David McCormick, the candidate who had been endorsed by Mike Pompeo, conceded the race on Friday evening once it was clear the recount (which was automatic because of the small number of votes separating the two candidates in the primary) wasn’t going his way.

After a bitter campaign that blanketed the airwaves with millions of dollars in attack ads, McCormick issued a gracious concession, vowing to help unite the party behind Oz.”

“It’s now clear to me with the recount largely complete that we have a nominee,” McCormick said at a campaign party at a Pittsburgh hotel. “And today I called Mehmet Oz to congratulate him on his victory.”

We here at Victory Girls were absolutely underwhelmed with Dr. Mehmet Oz as a candidate for Senate, despite the endorsement from Donald Trump. His conservative credentials are suspect, and he has yet to give up his Turkish citizenship (which he says he will do if he wins, which means he won’t do it yet). All Oz has as a candidate is name recognition. That, plus a reality TV pedigree, was enough for Donald Trump. Will it be enough for the voters of Pennsylvania? That remains to be seen.

Oz, for his part, accepted McCormick’s concession, and has now focused on the general election.

Now that our primary is over, we will make sure that this U.S. Senate seat does not fall into the hands of the radical left, led by John Fetterman.

— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) June 3, 2022

John Fetterman, Oz’s general election opponent for the Senate seat, is the current lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania. He is trying to dodge the “socialist” label while calling himself “progressive,” but he campaigned for Bernie Sanders. Fetterman is definitely hard radical left, no matter what label he tries to slap on it. He also comes with baggage that would have sunk a Republican candidate. In 2013, John Fetterman was a local mayor, and thinking he had found a crime suspect, pulled a shotgun on an unarmed black man who was out jogging. If this sounds like the Ahmaud Arbery case to you, you’re not alone. Tellingly, Fetterman – a white man who stands six feet, eight inches tall – has never acknowledged that he made a mistake, much less apologized for his actions. Even his Democrat primary opponents tried to hold him to account for what happened, and got the runaround during a debate in April.

The incident took center stage in the race Thursday when Fetterman’s two Democratic opponents — U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta — faced him for the first time at the first statewide televised debate and excoriated him over his actions in 2013 and for his refusal to say whether he erred or whether he would do anything differently today.”

“I attacked the gun violence problem in Braddock, and we succeeded,” Fetterman said Thursday on stage, emphasizing that there were no gun deaths in the high-crime borough for more than five of his 13 years as mayor.”

Fetterman went on to explain that he made the “split-second decision” to “intercept” the man “until our first responders arrived as Braddock’s chief law enforcement officer and as the mayor.”

Fetterman’s suggestion that he was acting according to law are a new talking point that stands in contrast to his initial comments about the 2013 incident.”

“He’s not shooting straight on this, no pun intended. Just ‘fess up. Apologize,” said Michael Nutter, Philadelphia’s last Black mayor, who served until 2016.”

“All this other stuff — that he was the chief law enforcement officer or that he didn’t know the guy was Black — just doesn’t really sound like he wants to tell the truth,” added Nutter, who is neutral in the Senate primary. “It’s not helping him. Figuratively speaking, he’s shooting himself in the foot, and he doesn’t have to.”

Do Pennsylvania Democrats think that Republicans won’t bring this up? It’s going to come up, and Fetterman might be able to duck being called a socialist, but he’s not going to be able to duck answering questions about holding a black man up with a shotgun because he thinks he was the “chief law enforcement officer” while he was mayor.

The other big thing Fetterman is trying to explain away is his health. On the day of the primary in Pennsylvania, Fetterman was in the hospital, having suffered a stroke just days before. He won the primary handily, but has not been seen in public or on the campaign trail since being hospitalized. While the campaign reported that the stroke was caught in time and the blood clot removed, Fetterman then had a pacemaker put in. Pacemakers are for hearts, not as an after-effect from a stroke. Even the New York Times noticed the discrepancy in reported illness and surgical treatment. On Friday, the Fetterman campaign finally admitted that the Democrat candidate has an underlying serious heart condition that he ignored for five years, and revealed that the heart condition was the cause of the stroke.

John Fetterman, who has been criticized for not providing more details about his health following his stroke, releases a letter from his doc saying he was first diagnosed in 2017 with an irregular heart rhythm. Said he ignored doctor’s advice for five years until he had a stroke pic.twitter.com/1LpZ1J214S

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 3, 2022

The campaign claims that Fetterman has suffered no cognitive damage from the stroke, and that all will be well, even though the candidate himself admits he “almost died.” In a supreme twist of irony, Dr. Mehmet Oz is a now-retired cardiothoracic surgeon. This Senate race has literally become a heart surgeon running against a candidate with a serious heart condition.

November is a lifetime away in political time. This race is certain to have all the financial stops pulled out on both sides. Mehmet Oz’s conservatism at this point is barely proved and largely shallow, despite his Trump endorsement. Will he appear more moderate compared to the hard left Fetterman? John Fetterman’s health at this point is problematic, and he has yet to get back out campaigning. Will his health improve enough for voters to forget the stroke and heart condition? Will he make the effort to explain the 2013 gun incident in a more apologetic tone? Can he campaign as a “progressive” Democrat without being dragged down by Joe Biden?

This Senate race is considered a “toss up” by Real Clear Politics. The voters of Pennsylvania are going to have an intense campaign season ahead of them.

Featured image: composite image of Dr. Mehmet Oz (via Jim Gillooly/PEI on Flickr, cropped, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)) and Lt. Governor John Fetterman (via Governor Tom Wolf on Flickr, cropped, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))