Biden will be in Pittsburgh for the city’s Labor Day parade, after traveling earlier this week to Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre.
Steven M. Falk/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP

But the event, which will feature Oz, Mastriano and Republican congressional candidate Jim Bognet along with the former president, also comes with risks for the GOP. Trump is loathed by many of the suburban and independent voters they are trying to win over. The former president flipped the state in the 2016 presidential election, but narrowly lost it to Biden in 2020. In a sign of how toxic his brand is in some parts of the state, Oz erased some of the Trump branding on his web site and social media accounts after the primary ended.

Brittany Yanick, a spokeswoman for Oz, said he “looks forward to President Trump talking to Pennsylvanians about the importance of fighting the radical, liberal agenda in Pennsylvania.”

Mastriano, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, said in an interview on a conservative podcast this week that Trump is “going to plug hard for myself and Oz” and “I expect he’s going to be swinging back because, as we discussed, what happened in Mar-a-Lago was unprecedented.”

Though the GOP’s concerns about Oz appear to have peaked over the summer, some national and Pennsylvania Republicans are still privately downbeat about his chances. They are worried that he may be too far behind in the polls to win, especially since voters begin casting ballots by mail in a few weeks.

And even though they have argued Fetterman is hiding from debates because he is in poor health after suffering a stroke in May, they don’t see that issue as likely to gain traction among voters, in part because Fetterman is on TV and he has been garnering positive headlines for his attacks on Oz on social media. They’ve also fretted about Oz’s ground game.

Republicans have been even more alarmed about Mastriano’s prospects. In the primary, GOP leaders were so fearful that he would lose the general election that they mounted a last-minute effort to coalesce behind one candidate in order to stop him. Some state Republicans grew more optimistic after the primary ended, but a TV advertising blitz by Shapiro over the summer went unmatched by Mastriano and the Republican Governors Association has yet to spend any money on his race.

But the last few weeks have given the GOP more hope in the state, particularly for Oz.

Some polls have shown a tightening race for the Senate, something both parties always expected to happen in the fall as more Republican money poured into the state. Oz has successfully recruited top conservative voices to rally around him, including on social media. And he has forced Fetterman to respond to his attacks over his criminal justice policy and unwillingness to commit to debates.

“I think Oz is in a pretty good position,” said Rob Gleason, the former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party. “Oz is getting around, doing his homework, doing town-to-town stuff. … Fetterman isn’t. He’s still wrestling with his post-stroke illness.”

As for Mastriano, Gleason said he “definitely has a chance because most people are going to vote against Joe Biden,” but “the big concern is he does not appear to be raising money.”

Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who managed Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, said that Trump and Biden’s upcoming visits to Pennsylvania demonstrate how tight the Senate and gubernatorial races could ultimately be — or perhaps already are.

“You’ve got the president of the United States and Donald Trump spending a lot of time in Pennsylvania,” he said. “It’s not because people think Mastriano doesn’t have a chance.”