The News Journal Won’t Tell You, but Bipartisan Ben duPont Backs Trump’s Boy Oz
Maybe I’m just lousy at navigating their archive, but I can’t find any evidence that the News Journal has ever reported on the close ties between Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz and Delaware entrepreneur Ben duPont, son of the late Gov. Pete.
In April, CNBC reported that duPont gave $70,000 to an Oz-for-Senate PAC. That was back when Oz was running neck-and-neck with a hedge funder for the Republican nomination. The News Journal had every reason to be interested given duPont’s prominence in the community — after all, he’s the owner of the DuPont Country Club property, and his wife, Laura Lemole, is the sister of Oz’s wife Lisa.
Yet when duPont penned an op-ed a few weeks ago upon passage of Biden’s climate-plus bill, praising Sen. Joe Manchin for his bipartisanship, he was identified only as president of No Labels Delaware, an outfit supposedly dedicated to finding solutions based in unity. Critics have pointed out that the national No Labels organization seems most dedicated to keeping rich people rich, but that’s beside the point. Their stated goal is about finding solutions through kumbaya.
That hardly jibes with his support for Oz. Since the Pride of Tower Hill School was endorsed by disgraced former president Donald Trump, he hasn’t said jack shit about bipartisanship, though he did pipe up this weekend to warn voters that should Democrat John Fetterman win the race, he’ll pal around with Bernie Sanders. My God, he’ll even caucus with him!
Look, I don’t admire duPont peddling bipartisan solutions, but if he wants to piss up that particular rope, it’s his business and his money, and bipartisanship has historically been good for both the business and money of rich people like him. But don’t write paeans to a Democrat who bucked his own party while simultaneously backing a Republican who’s caping for Trump, who’s never compromised on anything. That’s just naked hypocrisy.
And shame on the News Journal for not saying boo about any of it. I can only guess that their reticence is based either in self-interest — once the country club is developed it might mean more advertising, should the newspaper still exist by then — or ignorance. I’m not sure which explanation would be more embarrassing.
It can’t be self-interest centered on future advertising revenue — circulation is so low that they’re practically giving away ad space.
Ignorance would seem more likely.
But you’ve omitted indifference. There are no more local editorials (and I’ll be stunned if they endorse any candidates this fall) and I can’t imagine anyone (if there is an anyone) responsible for plugging op-eds into open space in the dead tree edition or floating them into cyberspace actually caring enough to change the trailers submitted by the op-eds’ authors to provide a more accurate characterization.