Former football coach Derek Dooley stood outside U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s Atlanta office Monday afternoon, flanked by a small crowd of supporters and a bank of cameras. Hours earlier, U.S. Rep. Mike Collins arrived at the same Midtown high-rise tower with much the same goal.
The Republican Senate rivals were there to deliver a message, trying to pin the ongoing government shutdown on the shoulders of the Democratic incumbent they hope to challenge.
“That’s not leadership. This is D.C. dysfunction. This is the stuff that drives me bananas, and most other Americans,” said Dooley. Collins, meanwhile, displayed a bright-pink termination notice in front of the office tower, accusing Ossoff of siding with “the radical left” by not voting to reopen the government.
Ossoff is widely viewed as the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for reelection next year — the lone Democrat running in a state President Donald Trump carried in 2024.
But as Republicans seize on the government shutdown to hammer Ossoff, the first-term senator is sticking to the same playbook that fueled his victory over David Perdue in 2021: leaning into his party’s base and casting GOP policies as a threat to Georgians’ health and their wallets.
For Ossoff, that means amplifying the Democratic narrative that frames the shutdown around expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, warning they could lead to higher health insurance premiums for more than 1 million Georgians. Already, an early preview of the state’s insurance marketplace exchange shows rates will soar for many Georgia customers if the credits aren’t extended.
At the Democratic Party of Georgia’s annual fundraising gala last week, Ossoff tore into what he called Trump’s “minions in the House and Senate” for refusing to extend the tax credits. In an interview with “Politically Georgia‚” he said Republicans are the ones feeling the heat on health care and the economy — two issues he sees as central to his reelection campaign.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
“This was all avoidable if my Republican colleagues had listened and worked across the aisle,” he said, “instead of going it alone and imposing these huge and damaging and destructive health care policies on Georgia that are making it harder to get health care services and more expensive to get health insurance.”
‘Hostage?’
The approach is part of a calculated strategy. Rather than triangulating toward the center as many Georgia Democrats once did, Ossoff, along with Sen. Raphael Warnock, has doubled down on the party’s economic message, betting that turnout from Democrats and independents will outweigh possible defections from Trump country.
He’s struck that tone from the opening weeks of Trump’s return to office, holding a defiant campaign kickoff declaring “Georgia will bow to no king” and town hall events focused on how Trump-driven mass layoffs could weaken the nation’s public health system.
One of Ossoff’s most unexpected allies might be fellow Georgian, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. The firebrand Rome Republican recently broke with her party by calling the loss of the subsidies a “failure by Republicans to not recognize it and to not be working on a solution.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Not all Democrats are on the same page. Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, along with Angus King of Maine, an independent who aligns with Democrats, broke party lines to vote for the GOP bill to extend funding through Nov. 21.
Collins, Dooley and another Republican contender, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, didn’t directly answer whether they would support extending the subsidies if the government is reopened. But all have framed Ossoff and other Democrats as holding the government for ransom to get what they want.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has made Ossoff its top target as it seeks to expand the GOP’s 53—47 majority, airing digital ads as part of a $5 million blitz accusing him of trying to “score political points.” And GOP contenders have joined in.
“He doesn’t represent the average Georgian, and he is beholden to the far left wing,” Collins said at a recent campaign stop. “And so he’s going to vote the way they tell him to, not the way the people in the state of Georgia ask him to.”
Dooley made a similar argument, while also acknowledging that the expiring subsidies pose a challenge to many Georgians.
“We need to have a serious debate, not just on the Affordable Care Act subsidies, because that is real, but on the health care system as a whole,” he said. “But that debate shouldn’t be held by holding the federal government hostage.”
Washington bureau chief Tia Mitchell contributed to this report.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
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