Pennsylvania's Democratic U.S. Senate nominee John Fetterman released a video Friday highlighting the refusal of his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, to say whether he would vote to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour.
During Tuesday night's televised debate between the two candidates, Oz was asked three times if he supports lifting the nation's hourly wage floor, which has remained stagnant since 2009 and provides only a third of what a full-time worker needs to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home in the United States.
The super-wealthy celebrity television doctor failed to answer each time, baselessly claiming that "market forces have already driven up the minimum wage" even as roughly 650,000 Pennsylvanians are currently struggling to survive below, at, or near the minimum wage.
"It's clear that Oz does not give a shit about the working people of Pennsylvania," Fetterman campaign spokesperson Joe Calvello said in a statement. "If Oz does not believe that we need a higher minimum wage, then he should move out of his ten mansions and live on $7.25 an hour to show us how it's done."
Fetterman has previously drawn attention to how Oz, whom he calls an "out of touch" multimillionaire, exploited a tax break intended to help struggling Pennsylvania farmers when he purchased 34 acres of rural land in Montgomery County for $3.1 million late last year.
Oz, who is backed by former President Donald Trump and long resided in a New Jersey mansion he still owns, acquired the Pennsylvania farmstead—one of his many properties around the globe—weeks after he launched his Senate campaign. He used the address of a Pennsylvania house owned by his in-laws to switch his voter registration in 2020, when Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) announced his impending retirement.
Oz "wears suits and shoes that cost more than some people make in a year," Calvello said Friday, "and yet he does not believe workers deserve dignity in their paycheck."
By contrast, Fetterman is an unequivocal supporter of congressional legislation to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Fetterman is currently leading Oz in the polls by one percentage point, down from 10.2 percentage points last month. The outcome of this pivotal battleground state race will help determine which party controls the Senate.
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.
Kenny Stancil | Radio Free (2022-10-28T19:06:22+00:00) Oz’s Refusal to Back Wage Hike Shows He ‘Does Not Give a Shit About’ Workers, Says Fetterman. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/28/ozs-refusal-to-back-wage-hike-shows-he-does-not-give-a-shit-about-workers-says-fetterman/
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