Amen Brown met with Mehmet Oz and progressives are circulating pictures of their chat

The photos conjure a sense of political intrigue — State Rep. Amen Brown, a West Philly Democrat chatting in a restaurant Friday with Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

Oz told Clout he was checking in with voters and didn’t know Brown was a Democrat. Brown said he bumped into Oz while taking his children to the Center City restaurant for treats.

And Brown accused City Councilmember Helen Gym, who was in the restaurant at the time, of taking the pictures that circulated in the city’s political community. He also said Gym told Oz, who has faced accusations of being a carpetbagger who only moved to Pennsylvania to run for Senate, that he should “go back to Jersey” when he passed her while leaving the restaurant.

A spokesperson for Gym said Brown spoke to Oz for about an hour in what did not appear to be happenstance and suggested Brown focus instead on getting out the vote for the Democratic Senate nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

Brown scoffed at the notion that he had a clandestine meeting with the Republican nominee and said the conversation was not as long as Gym claimed. His children posed for photos with Oz, and he introduced himself as a state legislator, he said.

“Who the hell would take their children to a private meeting, especially in a public place?” Brown said. “I ain’t sloppy.”

» READ MORE: Oz puts up underwhelming fund-raising numbers, but Fetterman pulls in big money

Oz, who told Clout he is encouraging the Republican Party to reach out to conservative Democrats and independents, said he just wants to hear what voters were thinking.

“I want to get smarter about the practicable realities of dealing with issues in Philadelphia, especially crime,” he said.

Brown, now seeking a second term, angered progressives as a rookie by introducing legislation for new mandatory-minimum jail sentences for some gun crimes. And he voted against the creation of a committee to investigate Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, the first step in a Republican push to impeach the prosecutor, but then accepted an appointment on that committee last week.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.