A political committee supporting Pennsylvania Rep. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz released an ad about an incident involving his competitor, Dem. Senate candidate John Fetterman, according to The Hill. The nearly decade old incident of Fetterman pulling a gun on a Black jogger was resurfaced in an effort to conjure support from Black voters.
American Leadership Action released a 30-second ad citing the 2013 that has since been cleared of all its controversy. In 2013, Fetterman heard gunfire and saw a man running away, reports say. He chased him down and detained him with his gun drawn waiting for the police to arrive. The jogger, Chris Miyares, was innocent but forgave Fetterman for the fiasco and supports him. Now Oz's campaign is trying to stir up Black voters in a fuss over this stale incident.
More on the incident from NBC News:
Fetterman has acknowledged he made a mistake, but he hasn't offered a full-throated apology, concerning grassroots activists like the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, a top Philadelphia Democratic organizer who helped turn out Black voters in big numbers to aid President Joe Biden 2020 victory in the state.
"I expected this ad as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west," said Tyler, who predicted this spring that Republicans would weaponize the issue against Fetterman to keep Black voters at home.
About 11% of the state's voters are Black. To win in the evenly divided swing state, Democrats often rely on maximizing their turnout, especially in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
A recent poll from Franklin & Marshall College suggested that while Fetterman led Oz by as much as 13 percentage points overall, the percentage of nonwhite voters who had no preference was double that of white voters - a sign of a lack of intensity that could spell trouble for Fetterman, said the college's pollster, Berwood Yost.
What a lame strategy: feeding off the Black community's trauma from Ahmaud Arbery's murder with a nearly identical incident to smear Fetterman's name. Yet, candidates capitalizing off Black trauma is exactly what Black voters expect every election. Every ad is just an attempt to convince us that one candidate is slightly more racist than the next when both of them are probably trash anyway.
The $500,000 ad is airing on BET, Oprah Winfrey Network and other networks where Black viewers flock to, according to The Hill. As expected, the Black voters of Braddock are not swayed given Oz is as phony as the Wizard.
"While Oz spends his time in his mansions in New Jersey, John Fetterman was the three term mayor of Braddock, a majority black town, and has worked hand in hand with the black community for years. Black voters are excited to vote for John because of his long record, and because they know he will fight for them in Washington," said Pennsylvania Sen. Vincent Hughes to NBC News.