Via the conservative news outlet The Washington Examiner, Mehmet Oz, known as the television personality Dr. Oz, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Pennsylvania Senate seat.
A vocal conservative, Oz’s profile rose in GOP circles as he pitched questionable practices to try to control the spread of the coronavirus. Oz’s professional reputation has sputtered as his celebrity grew: doctors and other medical and science professionals have challenged his advice about weight loss products, his support for gay conversion therapy and his fear mongering about arsenic in apple juice. Oz hosted Donald Trump on his show to review Trump’s claimed health record, and Oz was laudatory about Trump’s health, including congratulatory comments on Trump reportedly weighing 237 pounds though he was clearly heavier.
Oz also saw ire from the medical community for promoting unproven therapies to treat coronavirus, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, saying it was a patient’s right to choose treatments that are not approved or that show no documented progress at treating the virus. Oz also promoted in the spring of 2020 reopening schools, claiming that a 2-3% fatality rate for students and staff would be an acceptable number of deaths to get children back in school.
“The reality of our challenges has crystallized during the pandemic. Over 750,000 in the United States have died from the virus, a devastating toll for families and communities,” Oz wrote. “Many of those deaths were preventable. COVID-19 became an excuse for the government and elite thinkers who controlled the means of communication to suspend debate. Dissenting opinions from leading scholars were ridiculed and canceled so their ideas could not be disseminated.”
Oz has never held public office and he has never lived in Pennsylvania. Oz has won the James Randi Educational Foundation’s Pigasus Award for promoting pseudoscience for a series of episodes of his chat show promoting debunked energy therapies as legitimate medicine.
Currently a New Jersey resident, Oz switched his voter registration to his in-laws’ Pennsylvania address to be eligible to run. Pennsylvania requires candidates for US Senate to be residents of the state at the time of the election, but state law does not specify a time period for which a candidate must reside in the state.