Oz, Fetterman, Trump testing their star power in Pennsylvania primary
Political outsiders and celebrities see recognition can be blessing and curse
WASHINGTON – When Donald Trump talks about why Dr. Mehmet Oz should be a U.S. senator, he cites Oz’s medical background, his conservative views – and his celebrity.
“His show is great,” Trump told supporters May 6 at a rally in Pennsylvania, site of a primary Tuesday.
The former president endorsed Oz in early April as “brilliant and well-known.”
“He has lived with us through the screen and has always been popular, respected and smart,” Trump said.
Dr. Oz is the latest celebrity to try to turn fame into a political career. The list ranges from old-time radio hosts to movie and television stars, such as Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
In the age of former realitytelevision President Trump, the question of celebrity as a political qualification – and what that means for governance and even democracy – has taken on added meaning.
Oz is in the midst of a tight Republican primary race with opponents arguing that being the host of a television talk show does not qualify one to be a senator.
The Republican victor will face a challenging fall election contest with the winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is leading Democratic polls, became a statewide political celebrity by running as an outsider throughout his career. He doesn’t vie for party endorsements. He bucks campaign traditions by opting for shorts over suits.
Rescue dogs, social media
He has more than 200,000 individual donors and a spouse and rescue dogs with more than 175,000 social media followers. That’s in addition to his own social media presence with more than 600,000 followers.
Fetterman leads U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb in the latest Franklin & Marshall College Poll by almost 40 percentage points in the Democratic race for U.S. Senate.
Fetterman spoke with USA TODAY on Thursday, a day before he was admitted to a hospital in Lancaster for a stroke.
His wife, Gisele, said Sunday that they caught symptoms early and sought medical care quickly Friday.
The Fettermans said a full recovery is expected, and John added that he expects to win the primary Tuesday.
Fetterman and Oz would not be front-runners in their parties without their fame, according to Mike Mikus, a veteran Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania who supports Lamb.
“I’m not saying that in a nasty way,” he said. “Long before Fetterman ran for Senate, he was very good at promoting himself, even getting national press when he was the mayor of Braddock. And if Oz was not a TV celebrity, he wouldn’t get the Trump endorsement.”
The Pennsylvania primary is the latest stage for celebrity politics, a long-running phenomenon that involves “a shift in our political and our cultural values,” said Kathryn Cramer Brownell, an associate professor of history at Purdue University and author of “Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life.”
“This is part of a more open political landscape,” Brownell said. “It’s more media-driven, and it’s more performative.”
Brownell said celebrity politics has its positive aspects – “celebrities have used their fame to draw attention to issues and raise money for causes” – and negative ones: In part, she said, it “allows politicians to bypass critical questions from the press.”
Problems with celebrities carry over if they are elected, she said.
“Trump’s celebrity status helped him win the election, but his obsession with his own ratings undermined his ability to actually govern,” Brownell said.
Oz, the surgeon who parlayed his many appearances on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show into a program of his own, is vying for the Senate as a political outsider, a frequent role for celebrity candidates.
Oz’s opponents, including businessman David McCormick and conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, cast Oz as a carpetbagger who knows nothing about Pennsylvania.
“He’s been liberal, a Hollywood liberal, for his entire career,” McCormick, once the owner of the world’s largest hedge fund, said on Fox News.
Barnette, a frequent commentator on Fox News, said during a candidate forum in March that Oz “pretended to be a liberal while working beside Oprah and Michelle Obama.”
Trump said he believes the doctor is the Republicans’ best bet to win a general election – largely because he was a television star.
“You know, when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll, that means people like you,” Trump said during a rally in North Carolina on April 9.
Oz has approached the campaign the way previous celebrities have, as a fresh voice to try to reform a corrupted system.
Noting that Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and Trump had Hollywood roots, Oz said in one video ad, “Like me, they were conservative outsiders who fought the establishment.”
Oz believes his celebrity is “helpful to his campaign because he has always used that platform to empower individuals,” said campaign communications director Brittany Yanick. “He is proud of his career.”
Over the years, the success of some celebrity candidates has reflected general distrust of more traditional politicians, researchers said. Others have had their celebrity status work against them.
“People look at celebrities differently than they do other candidates,” said Mark Harvey, the author of “Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-Based Advocacy” and director of the MBA program at the University of St. Mary in Kansas.
In some cases, Harvey said, voters see familiar celebrities as “more credible than politicians.”
Mikus puts it this way: “Voters don’t like a phony.”
Celebrity candidates, perhaps because of their experience connecting with audiences, typically have a better chance connecting with voters, he said.
Oz has managed his Pennsylvania campaign stops like episodes of his TV show, recreating the format of the show with television-like sets.
Fetterman has campaigned in all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, including stops in bars and bingo halls in the most conservative areas.
Mikus said the Democrat has the edge on authenticity.
“Fetterman comes across as the real deal. What you see is what you get. Oz has been all over the map on issues,” he said.
On air and on the trail
First-time candidates who made their names in other endeavors have another advantage over run-of-the-mill politicians, Harvey said: high name recognition.
Celebrities also tend to have big money or at least the ability to raise big money from their fans.
There are also drawbacks. In addition to a lack of political experience, celebrities have said and done things that could look bad in the heat of a campaign.
McCormick and other opponents dredged up a litany of televised Oz comments portraying him as favoring abortion rights, opposing gun rights, backing President Barack Obama’s health care plan and saying nice things about China, all anathema to Trump Republican doctrine.
Trump’s endorsement of Oz drew criticism from many conservatives. Some people booed Oz when he took the stage at this month’s rally with Trump.
As for so many before him, fame has been “a blessing and a curse” for Oz, said Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy and the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College.
“He’s, of course, wellknown, but he has a record of taking positions on air that make some voters doubt his conservative credentials,” Yost said. “He’s not particularly well-liked among the Republican faithful.”
With his 6-foot-8-inch stature, Fetterman is used to standing out and getting media attention as the “tattooed mayor” with a goatee and gym shorts, but he cringes at the thought of being a celebrity.
“I couldn’t be further from that,” he said in an interview with USA TODAY. “I’m just a regular guy. I’m a guy who can’t even get his kids to clean their rooms.”
His wife, Gisele, also shies away from being called a celebrity. “We’re just parents of three kids who want the world to be better for them and everyone else,” she said.
For all the downplaying of their status, analysts said Pennsylvania’s second couple have a big influence in the state.
“They’re a new version of a power couple,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. “They have a synergy about them. They have similar views, but how they frame them is quite different in style but ultimately complementary. She has helped his campaign tremendously.”
The Fettermans know Gisele is an asset. John’s supporters frequently wear shirts that say to “vote for Gisele’s husband.”
“She’s everyone’s favorite, from my parents all the way down to every room we’re in,” he said.
“I think you just get a package with us,” Gisele Fetterman said. “You get all of us.”
That includes their three children and two rescue dogs, she said.
Fetterman has campaigned on the idea that he doesn’t look like a typical politician and, more importantly, he doesn’t act like one.
“When I talk to people who aren’t engaged around politics, they like Fetterman because he is different,” said Democratic strategist J.J. Abbott, former press secretary to Gov. Tom Wolf. “He has a brand that he’s not your typical politician and seems more approachable.”
‘Pass the biscuits, Pappy’
In many ways, celebrity politics has been around as long as American politics.
Famous people often vied for political office in previous centuries, particularly military heroes such as Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant.
During the 20th century, celebrity politics evolved in connection with the rise of mass media, especially radio and motion pictures.
In the 1930s, W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, a Texas flour company executive and the founder of a swing band, became famous with a music radio show that opened with a mountain tune that included the catch phrase “Please pass the biscuits, Pappy.”
Going into politics, O’Daniel won election in 1938 as governor of Texas. In 1941, he won a special election to the U.S. Senate over a field that included congressman and future president Lyndon Johnson.
LBJ biographer Robert Caro wrote that reporters treated O’Daniel’s gubernatorial campaign “as a joke.”
Voters, however, took it very seriously and overwhelmingly elected O’Daniel.
“For years, he’s been talking to us on the radio,” a farmer said during the 1938 campaign.
California, the home of Hollywood, has launched many a celebrity political career.
Actress Helen Gahagan Douglas won election to the U.S. House in 1944. She tried for the Senate in 1950 but lost the election to a more traditional politician, Richard Nixon.
Over the past six decades, as television became increasingly powerful in politics, more former actors ascended the political ladder, especially in California: George Murphy became U.S. senator; Ronald Reagan became governor, then president; and Arnold Schwarzenegger won a recall race in 2003 to become governor.
Before Oz, Pennsylvania’s most notable celebrity candidate was probably Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steelers star and football broadcaster whom the Republicans nominated for governor in 2006. Swann lost the election to incumbent Democrat Ed Rendell.
Celebrities have run and won up and down the ballot, from Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, Mayor Clint Eastwood to U.S. Rep. Sonny Bono, RCalif., to U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.
This year, former football star Herschel Walker – a former contestant on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” – is running for a Senate seat in Georgia.
Pennsylvania race
Whether Trump’s or Oz’s celebrity can help win a Senate seat remains to be seen.
Polls show a too-close-tocall race among Oz, McCormick and Barnette.
The fall election is likely to be tough. Pennsylvania is a battleground state that could decide whether Republicans or Democrats win a majority of the U.S. Senate.
The Senate campaign in Pennsylvania is likely to be one of the most expensive on record and possibly one of the most vicious, as both parties vie for a seat that could swing the power of Congress.
Though celebrity candidates have a name-recognition advantage in the primary, they also have more exposure in the general election.
“There’s no doubt that celebrity has opened a door for Oz and Fetterman here,” Borick said. “It doesn’t come without cost once you’re in the door.”