Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen is calling for Pennsylvania’s Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, John Fetterman, to debate Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz before September 19, when voting begins.
Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in May and has struggled to communicate at public events thereafter, has dodged debates with Oz. The Democrat candidate told Politico this week that he would engage in a debate “sometime in the middle to end of October” after mounting pressure to debate from local and national newspapers and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), whose seat he is vying for.
This is weeks after voting will be underway, and the Democrat candidate has provided no specifics on a date, television station, or moderator. Thiessen, a former speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, authored an opinion column in the Washington Post Friday calling on Fetterman to square off with Oz within the next week and a half.
He cited the 2016 senatorial election in Illinois, where Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) debated his opponent, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), multiple times after suffering an apparently more severe stroke than Fetterman. He ended up losing.
Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, right, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth, left, face off in their first televised debate in what’s considered a crucial race that could determine which party controls the Senate, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016, at the University of Illinois in Springfield, Ill (AP Photo/Seth Perlman).
“Pennsylvania voters deserve the chance to judge for themselves before they start casting ballots in less than two weeks,” he wrote. “If Kirk could hold more than one debate, so can Fetterman.”
The Oz campaign had offered several concessions to his opponent for a now unrealized KDKA debate, including one where they offered to “pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby.” Fetterman attempted to frame the concessions as mocking “a stroke survivor” and said he “chose not to participate in this farce.”
Thiessen asserted:
Mehmet Oz has not handled the situation well. After Fetterman ridiculed Oz for referring to a vegetable platter as “crudité,” Oz’s campaign responded by declaring that “if John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke.” It was unseemly for Oz — a cardiothoracic surgeon — to mock the health of a stroke victim.
He added that the Oz camp’s rhetoric is “no excuse to duck debates before voters begin casting mail-in ballots on Sept. 19.”
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