Dr. Oz's campaign to be the next Republican senator from Pennsylvania is facing one major problem: Republicans in Pennsylvania. Olivianuzzi reports
Photo-Illustration: Joe Darrow Dr. Oz for Senate is headquartered in a patch of strip mall next to a Mexican restaurant in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where the candidate’s father-in-law, Dr. Gerald Lemole, maintains a medical office down the road from the Lemole family farm, three acres overlooking the Philmont Country Club that the candidate, who seems to live in New Jersey, has claimed as his official place of residence.
Outside headquarters, Palma said that I might be in luck. As it happened, he was a friend of the family, and he had an idea. He could place a call to someone and ask them to contact Dr. Lemole — whom he called “Uncle Jerry” — since maybe he would know the whereabouts of his candidate son-in-law. “That’s what Casey — ” Mrs. Oz began to say, referring to the campaign manager. “When Michelle told me she spoke to her — ” she continued, referring to Michelle Bouchard, a longtime friend of the couple whom I had interviewed a few days earlier. We’d hit it off during a long conversation that I found helpful for understanding Dr. and Mrs. Oz, and she had volunteered to forward my request to the couple and encourage them to speak with me too. Then she clammed up.
At the time, the remarks didn’t strike me as significant. Bouchard was a friend of the candidate, and she was doing her best to sell me on the idea that he was a force for good. If anything, I was inclined to agree with the premise that Dr. Oz’s braininess was an improvement for the Republican Party; a two-party system like ours suffers when the most prominent representatives are proudly anti-intellectual, as Republicans have been for most of my lifetime, from George W.
Dr. Oz with Nate Berkus, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil, and Suze Orman in 2010. Photo: Amanda Schwab/Starpix/Shutterstock/Amanda Schwab/Starpix/Shuttersto Probably it had to do with the collapse of institutions at the most macro level. With the sins of the Catholic Church. With the decades of traumas and scandals in Washington. With the disintegration of the community that accompanied the rush to the suburbs.
Dr. Oz made viewers feel safe and in control of their bodies and, by extension, their destinies. What’s more: He had tips for losing weight, catnip for housewives and for Oprah viewers deeply invested in the host’s endless war against her own uncooperative corporeal form. My mother leapt at Dr. Oz’s suggestions to consume strange oils from fish and flaxseed. To collect “superfoods” as if the food pyramid were a game of Pac-Man and quinoa and açai were extra lives.
Dr. Oz became an Oprah regular, and when The Dr. Oz Show premiered, it took off. He fit in easily among the celebrities in his new social stratum and now counts among his friends everyone from hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio to Brooke Shields and Martha Stewart . And then Dr. Oz seemed to change. Despite his critics, Dr. Oz remained in syndication until he decided to walk away for his next act, something that, in Trumpian fashion, he has spun as a sacrifice that demonstrates his commitment to his country. Yet Dr. Oz leaves his show with one year left on his contract with Sony Pictures Television, and those with knowledge of the deal told me it would have been a struggle to get it renewed again. “The ratings of The Dr.
Getting the nomination of either party for a race this high profile is bound to be a fraught endeavor, and nobody is likely to emerge with both their dignity and their sanity intact. When GOP leaders statewide sought to censure Toomey for voting to convict President Trump of inciting the January 6 insurrection during his second impeachment trial, the expectations for candidates in the primary crystallized.
Plus Dr. Oz had been hated by some of the very people who went on to make up the #resistance to the Trump presidency ever since he was dragged before Congress in 2014 and yelled at by Claire McCaskill for promoting diet pills and other quacky quick fixes on his program. In the years thereafter, Dr. Oz seemed to radicalize against what we now refer to as “cancel culture.”
Parnell made his exit official on November 22, and eight days later Dr. Oz was in the race, advertising himself with a combination of MAGA slogans, medical puns, and references to his own brand. “Pennsylvania needs a conservative who will put America first,” he said. Why was he running? Well, he wouldn’t put it that way. In his words, he was “stepping forward to help cure our country’s ills” because “America’s heartbeat is in a code red in need of a defibrillator to shock it back to life.
On Fox News recently, Dr. Oz was asked the kind of obvious-to-arise question consultants are paid to coach a candidate to answer. He smirked and nodded as the host wound up: “What is your position as both a doctor and a senatorial candidate on when life begins? When should we draw the line when abortion is legal?”
On paper, there’s at least as much of a Trumpist case against a globalist money guy as there is against a celebrity who took part in the Obama White House’s anti-obesity campaign, yet it’s McCormick who seems primed to collect the support of everyone from Bannon to the vest-wearing Republicans who threw their weight behind the recent victor in Virginia.
Still, laughing off the TV doc feels a bit like laughing off the TV dealmaker, and if The Apprentice created a fantasy persona for its star that appealed mostly to young men who wanted to be rich, The Dr. Oz Show and its Oprah-endorsed star are best understood as wellness fantasy for women.
My new habits were not in pursuit of self-improvement but of public service, in accordance with the general dietary and lifestyle advice dispensed by Dr. Oz. The idea was to live as he said I ought to live while I reported on his political ambitions as a means of better understanding his contributions to American popular culture. But consistency is the thief of content, and new information about Dr.
Although Boyle has lived in the area for about 15 years and has been an elected official here for 13 of them, he had never heard even a rumor about Dr. Oz visiting the area, never mind living in it. “Literally, I learned this for the first time two days ago reading the local paper.” Not only that, but the farm Dr. Oz now claims as his home is less than ten minutes from Boyle’s house. “I laughed out loud and then I texted my wife and said, ‘You will not believe where Dr.
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