Mehmet Oz has run a campaign largely against John Fetterman. Now he has a chance to tell voters what he’s for.

While Mehmet Oz has railed against crime in Philadelphia, he had said little until Monday about what he would do as a U.S. senator to fix it. He has refused to say if he would have voted for the bipartisan gun-safety bill that became law last summer and offered vague answers about raising the minimum wage or a national 15-week ban on abortion.

Instead, Oz has focused on his opponent, John Fetterman, painting him as soft on crime and an extension of President Joe Biden’s “liberal agenda.”

“Guys like John Fetterman take everything to the extreme. Why are we letting murderers out? Why is the solution always tax and spend?” Oz says in an ad released last week.

Much of the focus of Tuesday’s Senate debate will be on Fetterman and his health, but the evening could also be telling for Oz in the final days of the tight Senate race.

» READ MORE: John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz are finally facing off in a Senate debate. Here’s what we’re watching for.

Fetterman has accused Oz of running a hollow campaign with no core values, focused on saying what he needs for his own advancement. Oz could face some of these questions again on the biggest stage yet in the campaign’s one and only debate, when both candidates will be pressed in public to clarify their stances in what has been a largely personality-focused race.

“It’s very curious,” Fetterman said at a rally in Delaware County earlier this month. “Dr. Oz hasn’t run one single positive ad about himself. What does that really say about him? No plans. No solutions. He’s just trying to tear me down.”

Oz does stand for something, President Joe Biden said last week: “He’s for undoing everything that we have done.”

That could be a winning strategy in a year predicted to be rough for Democrats.

“Biden is very unpopular across the state, and Fetterman would be a rubber-stamp vote for Biden if he were elected,” said GOP strategist Charlie Gerow. “It’s the best strategy.”

Such an approach can also leave a candidate undefined.

Republican strategist Matt Beynon took a long pause when asked to describe Oz’s political identity.

“I think he’s presented himself as a very traditional Republican ... but I think it’s basically a contrast to what’s going on in Biden’s administration, and if you don’t like 8% inflation and record-high gas prices … and you don’t like violence in your streets, give Dr. Oz a shot,” he said.

Meanwhile, Fetterman has been carving out a political identity for years as a small-town mayor turned lieutenant governor who champions working-class Pennsylvanians, unions, and “forgotten communities.” But his political career has also provided Oz with two decades to pick apart.

“Oz is trying to tie low favorability for Washington Democrats to Fetterman, although I don’t think it’s successful, because we can all look at Fetterman and say, ‘John’s not a Washington politician,’” Democratic strategist Mustafa Rashed said.

Oz has not agreed to an interview with The Inquirer despite several requests over the last three months. And while he has publicly pushed Fetterman for debates, Oz declined to meet with at least two major newspaper editorial boards, including The Inquirer’s. While he has taken questions at campaign events — something Fetterman does not do due to auditory processing challenges after his stroke — Oz offers mostly vague answers even on the topics he is highlighting. Although he did open campaign events early on, his more recent ones have not been widely advertised and are often announced only after the fact. Select media outlets are invited, and his one-on-one interviews are almost exclusively on Fox News.

Fetterman has also often been vague on issues, talking more in broad strokes about fighting for “forgotten communities” and a “union way of life,” but his campaign has generally responded with his views when asked specific policy questions.

Berwood Yost, a pollster at Franklin & Marshall College, said Oz’s light policy profile fits a political strategy: When the party in power is unpopular, make the election about them, not your own ideas. He noted that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has deliberately avoided laying out an agenda, and that many in the GOP were angry when the head of their national Senate campaign arm, Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.), unveiled a policy plan — which immediately became a target for Democrats.

”All these midterms tend to be about the party in power,” Yost said, and voters typically take out their frustrations on that party. “You are the alternative, so you don’t have to lay out a strong policy platform. You can basically say, ‘We’re not going to do what those guys are doing, because you hate it.’”

» READ MORE: Big personalities. Scant policies.

Crime in Philadelphia is central to Oz’s campaign. On Monday, the day before the debate, Oz released a three-page plan to fight crime, which called for permanently classifying fentanyl as a Schedule 1 drug, securing “every inch of the southern border,” designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations, and maintaining cash bail for violent offenders. Previously, Oz had offered few concrete solutions as to how a U.S. senator would reduce homicides or gun violence. He has declined to say what, if any, gun-control legislation he’d support or if he would have voted for the gun safety act.

“The bi-partisan Safer Communities Act is the law of the land, and Dr. Oz believes we should make sure it is working to keep our communities safe and ensure states have the resources they need to improve mental health services,” Oz campaign strategist Barney Keller said.

Oz has said he does not believe in abortion except in cases of incest, rape, or if the mother’s life is in danger. He’s been asked repeatedly if he would support Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill to ban abortion at 15 weeks but hasn’t answered if he’d vote yes or no. Instead, he’s said he thinks the decision should be left up to states.

“It’s strange and frankly bizarre that the Philadelphia Inquirer keeps asking this question over and over again,” Keller said. “Even though Dr. Oz’s answer clearly states how Dr. Oz would handle voting on federal legislation that might interfere with states’ decisions on abortion.”

Oz has zeroed in on the opioid crisis throughout his campaign, highlighting painful stories from those who have lost loved ones. While he’s made clear he opposes supervised injection sites, which are not legal in Pennsylvania, he’s offered few other solutions beyond “getting people into detox.”

Oz told reporters during a tour of Kensington that he thinks the minimum wage should be increased. But he hasn’t answered whether he would support a federal increase, or by how much.

“Dr. Oz supports a higher minimum wage when employment and economic conditions warrant increasing the minimum wage,” Keller said.

As the campaign rounds the final stretch, Oz has pivoted slightly away from attack ads and run a few spots that more directly pitch himself as a political centrist, a doctor, and a father. Yost, with Franklin & Marshall, noted most voters tend to vote on gut, which might make sense in the Senate, where no one can get their way alone.

”I think politics tends to be fought on emotional grounds, not rational grounds,” Yost said. ”I would have liked to have seen far more substance about policy stances, but frankly that’s just not the ground where things have been fought.”

Staff writer Jonathan Tamari contributed to this article.