Oprah, who helped Mehmet Oz establish TV following, endorses Fetterman in Senate race

TV icon Oprah Winfrey on Thursday endorsed Democrat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania's hotly contested Senate race and rejected Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom she had helped launch to stardom nearly two decades ago when she brought him on her popular daytime talk show as a regular guest.

Oz left Oprah's show after five years and 55 episodes to start his own daytime TV program, The Dr. Oz Show, which ran for 13 seasons before he moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to run for the Senate.

Until now, Winfrey had said she would leave the election to Pennsylvanians, but she changed that position in an online discussion on voting in next Tuesday's election.

"I said it was up to the citizens of Pennsylvania and of course, but I will tell you all this, if I lived in Pennsylvania, I would have already cast my vote for John Fetterman for many reasons," Winfrey said, before going on to urge listeners to vote for Democrats running for governor and Senate in various states.

She did not mention Oz by name during the virtual event held with her OWN Your Vote coalition, an initiative she started two years ago to encourage and provide resources on the electoral process to Black women.

Winfrey in the past has hit the campaign trail for candidates such as former president Barack Obama, as well as Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams. During the 2020 campaign affected by the pandemic, she participated in a virtual event for Joe Biden.

The Pennsylvania Senate seat is considered one of the key races in determining control of the chamber, which is currently 50-50 but controlled by Democrats due to Vice-President Kamala Harris's vote to break any ties.

Polls now show a close race between Fetterman and Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon who is endorsed by former president Donald Trump.

In a sign of how high the stakes are, Trump will return to Pennsylvania on Saturday to campaign for Oz, while President Biden as well as Obama will each campaign for Fetterman that same day.

The two candidates had their lone debate last week. Fetterman, recovering from a stroke suffered in the spring, used closed-captioning posted above the moderator to help him process the words he heard, leading to occasional awkward pauses and struggles to communicate.

Oz also stumbled at times. Fetterman's campaign and national Democratic groups have since poured money into TV ads with a debate clip of Oz, in which he says, "I want women, doctors, local political leaders" to decide the fate of a woman's right to an abortion.

The seat is being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

According to a recap on her website of the virtual event, Winfrey also endorsed Democratic Senate candidates Mandela Barnes (Wisconsin), Cheri Beasley (North Carolina), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada) and Val Demings (Florida), as well as Abrams and Beto O'Rourke in their bids for the governor's offices in Georgia and Texas, respectively.