Democrat Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman and his campaign staffers have made his Republican opponent Mehmet Oz’s property ownership (and alleged dueling residences in both PA and New Jersey) the focal point of their talking points against him, with the ad below being a primary example:
The point, of course, is to make Dr. Oz out to be an elitist, out-of-touch carpetbagger who doesn’t have the interests of blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania at heart.
While it seemed the attacks were working early on in the race, the polls eventually began to tighten some not long after Oz’s campaign finally took the gloves off against Fetterman and called him out, referring to him as a “spoiled man-child” who has been “hiding in his basement scrolling social media for months,” a swipe at Fetterman’s admission that he was given considerable financial assistance from his mom and dad up until he was in his late 40s, and was gifted a house by his sister.
But while Fetterman, who took a taxpayer-funded vacation to NJ while urging COVID lockdowns, has been busy not answering questions from reporters while trying to portray himself as the authentic, man-of-the-people in the race, something he apparently failed to disclose is that he owns some eight properties in the state that are said to be worth close to a combined total of $110,000:
A watchdog group [Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT)] is filing a complaint asking the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate why Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman did not disclose eight real estate assets on his most recent personal financial disclosure.
The total value of the properties he left off his disclosure form was $108,800. All eight of the properties were in Braddock, Pa.- Fetterman’s hometown where he served as mayor. His name is listed as owner on all of them on the Allegheny County website. Many of the properties appeared to be empty lots worth between $10,000 and $20,000 that are surrounding Fetterman’s home. One was a building structure worth over $40,000.
Fetterman did not list a single real estate asset on his most recent July 29 disclosure, but his team says he did not have to because they did not produce income and weren’t classified as investments.
Between this news, Fetterman’s opposition to school choice, his racisty opposition to voter ID, his soft-on-crime positions, his opposition to fracking, and his troubling belief in abortion on demand for any reason and at any stage of pregnancy, it’s little wonder Fetterman is trying to limit debates between himself and Oz to merely one in mid to late October, well after a chunk of early votes are cast.
Oz has been right to push for more than just one debate with Fetterman, something with which even some of Fetterman’s allies in the mainstream media actually agree. Control of the United States Senate may hinge on this race, and voters deserve to know more about who John Fetterman is beyond the Very Online persona that his campaign team has carefully crafted for him in his months-long absence from the campaign trail due to his May stroke.
As I’ve said before, health issues or not, Fetterman has taken some highly questionable and in some cases hypocritical positions on the issues, and the people in his state have the right to ask questions and demand answers about who he is and where he stands. That he was further exposed in the report on his property ownership as a hypocritical Democrat kind of nukes his main talking point against Oz, and is but one of many issues about Fetterman that calls for answers directly from the nominee himself, answers he has shown so far he’s unwilling to give.
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