Apartment mogul Richard Kurtz says he’s giving to Oz and other Republican candidates not because of the economy but to keep his tenants safe.
A Florida resident with longstanding ties to New Jersey, apartment mogul Richard Kurtz has given at least $232,500 in support of Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz’s Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
In August, Kurtz gave $5,000 to the pro-Oz Dose Of Reality, Optimism and Zeal PAC, followed by another $27,500 to the Oz Victory Fund. Then, in September, Kurtz gave $200,000 to American Leadership Action, a third pro-Oz PAC.
Kurtz made the $200,000 gift through four different apartment complexes in eastern Pennsylvania: Longview Gardens, Twin Terrace, Bellevue Court and Woodbourne Apartments, all owned by The Kamson Corporation, the New Jersey-headquartered multifamily real estate business Kurtz founded and has run as CEO for over four decades. Kurtz’s name does not appear in the FEC filing.
“I think he’s a spectacular man to be a United States Senator and I think he’s a gift to this country–a gift,” Kurtz gushed to Forbes in a recent phone interview. “In my whole life, I’ve never gotten involved in the way I’ve gotten involved here, because he’s such an amazing human being.”
Kurtz and Oz did not meet until this summer, but—“ironically,” in Kurtz’s telling—the two lived near each other for years in New Jersey. Kurtz owns two homes in Alpine, an upscale neighborhood in Bergen County, about a half hour drive from Oz’s mansion in Cliffside Park, which he and his wife, Lisa Oz, built in 2000 and still own. (Dr. Oz has said he moved into his wife’s parents’ home in Pennsylvania in 2020).
Kurtz sold a third home in Alpine–the 30,000-square-foot “Stone Mansion”–for $27.5 million earlier this year after struggling to sell it for years. All of his Alpine properties were part of the historic estate of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, which Kurtz bought for $58 million in 2006.
Kurtz and Oz are also practically neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida, where Kurtz’s $30 million mansion is three miles south of Oz’s historic Louwana estate, which he bought in 2018 for $18 million.
