Election 2023
The Senate candidate ordered a sandwich from the city’s two most famous steak stands, but received a response from only one. See the article : Schumer encourages high-tech energy storage company to locate in Old Tech City.
Following a playbook typically embraced by out-of-state presidential candidates, Senate candidate Mehmet Oz stopped by Cheesesteak Vegas last week during a visit to Philadelphia.
The Republican candidate, who won Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate primary by such a slim margin it required a recount, and who will face Democrat John Fetterman in November, made sure to hit both Pat and Geno.
There was a noticeable difference between the two photos Oz posted to Twitter showing his visit. In one, he stands side-by-side with Geno Vento, owner of the neon-adorned shop after which the second-generation owner was named. In the other photo, Pat’s King of Steaks third-generation owner Frank Olivieri is nowhere to be found.
Anyone who missed the meaning pointed it out when Pat offered a searing response.
“Do you even live in Pa?” And can you spell the city you live in? the official @PatsSteaks account tweeted, referring to the story that Oz, a heart surgeon best known as a TV celebrity made famous by Oprah, lived in New Jersey for a long time and only recently moved to Huntingdon Valley – who was misspelled “Huntington” on his official nomination papers.
Pat’s post quickly went viral (at the time of this writing, it has nearly 23,000 likes and over 2,500 retweets). It was spurred on not only by Fetterman supporters, but also by political pundits who know how influential cheesesteak politics can be.
Geno’s Steaks has long been the choice of Republicans due to the leanings of founder Joey Vento, who adorned the walls of his store with police badges and whose dying wish was that the store’s anti-immigrant “Speak English” sign would not is ever removed from the command window.
The xenophobic placard was finally taken down by Geno Vento in 2016, half a decade after his father’s death and months before Donald Trump made it a campaign stop.
The other side of the aisle gravitates almost by default to Pat’s Steaks. But the originator of the cheesesteak, open since 1930 after a taxi driver helped founder Pat Olivieri come up with the idea of serving curly beef on a bun, has been the downfall of unsuspecting politicians.
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In the most famous example of a sandwich deflating a candidate, 2004 Democratic hopeful John Kerry made the faux pas of asking Swiss for his cheesesteak. It’s unclear how his staff failed to inform him that you could only choose from a “Whiz-American-provolone” trifecta, but after The Inquirer reported on it, the gaffe – combined with photos of the stings Kerry tricks – was grabbed by the national press and helped put the former senator out of action.
Since then, the candidates have been quite careful in their orders.
Barack Obama went to Pat’s in 2008 and ordered one with Whiz. In 2016, Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren did the same. Hopeful Republican candidate Scott Walker, then governor of Wisconsin, visited both stores – and was surprised to ask for his with American cheese (a perfectly acceptable order) as well as rushing to the front of the queue .
All of this attention has led to headlines like the one published by The Economist in the fall of 2020: “Why Philly Cheesesteak Can Rock a Presidential Election.”
Now the sandwich is embroiled in a Senate race. Dem candidate and current Lt. Gov. Pa. Fetterman is known as a strong advocate for Philadelphia’s cheesesteak prowess, no matter where he’s from. Two years ago, he got into a heated Twitter battle with the official New Jersey government account after he tweeted suggesting the best cheesesteaks come from across the river.
Has Fetterman ever been to Pat or Geno? Unlikely, or at least not since the primary, as he was sidelined by a stroke that happened days before the election and is just getting back on the campaign trail.
So far, the @GenosSteaks account has remained out of the discussion.
