Welcome back to Broad + Liberty’s Candidate Spotlight Series! Each week, we reach out to candidates all across the Commonwealth up for election to public office — an equal number of Democrats and Republicans; incumbents and challengers. We ask one question per week about public policy pressing to you. Those answers are shared on our website every Wednesday.

Yesterday, we featured our gubernatorial nominees. Today, we are spotlighting our senatorial candidates’ responses to our third question. Join us later in the week for the remainder of our responses from candidates across Pennsylvania!

This week’s question: For at least the last century, Pennsylvania has been slowly losing population. Recently, while Southern and Western America offered examples of increased population during the Covid-19 pandemic, Pennsylvania experienced a population decline. What do you believe is causing this outward migration and how would you stop it?

Mehmet Oz (R)

Across Pennsylvania, I meet incredible people every day who demonstrate the hardworking spirit, pragmatism, and patriotism of our commonwealth. We need leaders who recognize these strengths when it comes to growing our communities and advocating for Pennsylvania jobs and values. But because of slower population growth over the past several decades, Pennsylvania has lost representation in Congress.

During the pandemic, the shortcomings of state government policies were exacerbated by Washington’s out-of-touch, far-left agenda. These disastrous policies have restrained our economy and energy development, discouraged work, shipped our jobs overseas, and imposed a radical agenda of higher crime on our streets and a woke ideology in our schools. This is not a sustainable path if we want to grow our communities and our state. Sadly, my opponent, John Fetterman, wants to continue these policies and push Pennsylvania even further to the left.

In the U.S. Senate, I will be a bold voice for Pennsylvania by standing up to the radical Biden-Fetterman agenda. I will focus on creating Pennsylvania jobs and putting communities ahead of the far left’s big-government mandates that have made it harder to do business, go to school, and raise a family here. We need to refocus our education system on putting children and parents first, and we need to prepare students for the jobs of both today and tomorrow by creating pathways to careers right here in Pennsylvania.

We have so much untapped potential within our people and the natural resources beneath our feet. If we return to the mindset of making Pennsylvania the innovation, education, and job creation capital of the northeast, we will jumpstart growth of our economy and our population for generations to come.

John Fetterman (D)

The Fetterman campaign chose not to respond.

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