BLUE BELL, PA – Former President Donald Trump, put in a last-minute pitch in for Mehmet Oz, the Senate candidate he endorsed in Pennsylvania’s crowded, combative, and extremely expensive GOP Senate race.
“This is Donald Trump urging you to vote for Dr. Oz on Tuesday,” the former president said in an automated call on behalf of Oz on the eve of Tuesday’s primary in the key battleground state.
And Trump called into the cardiac surgeon, author and well-known celebrity physician’s final campaign event and accompanying tele-rally ahead of the primary, stressing that Oz is “never, ever going to let you down. He’s a strong guy, smart gentleman…he’s going to be a great senator.”
Trump isn’t on the ballot, but the strength of his grip over the GOP is being tested in Pennsylvania and a handful of other states holding primaries on Tuesday.
Oz, who until the launch of his Senate campaign late last year was host of TV’s popular “Dr. Oz Show,” has been one of the two polling front-runners for a couple of months in the GOP showdown to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, in a race that may decide whether the GOP wins back the Senate majority in November’s midterm elections.
Oz has been one of the two combatants in a slugfest with co-front-runner Dave McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, West Point graduate, Gulf War combat veteran and Treasury Department official in former President George W. Bush‘s administration.
The Oz and McCormick campaigns and outside super PACs backing the two contenders since the beginning of the year have spent tens of millions of dollars to run TV, digital and radio ads attacking each other over their conservative credentials and over key issues since the beginning of the year.