Jon Ossoff’s anti-Trump pitch gets personal
Today’s newsletter highlights:
- Another 2028 hopeful heads to Georgia.
- Keisha Lance Bottoms pushes back against Rick Jackson’s criticism of her summer travel.
- Brad Raffensperger declined to endorse most Republicans this year, including Mike Collins.
Escalating attacks
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s scathing takedowns of President Donald Trump entered new territory Sunday. And this time, his fiery remarks went viral for a very different reason.
The Georgia Democrat roasted Trump over his reliance on 35-year-old White House executive assistant Natalie Harp, a near-constant presence at the president’s side.
“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do his job,” Ossoff told about 1,600 supporters in Atlanta.
Then came the line that ricocheted across social media:
“He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
Harp was among the handful of aides selected to accompany him during last month’s extraordinary secret plane switch in Turkey, while the plane normally used as Air Force One continued as a decoy with journalists and senior aides aboard.
The jab came under some criticism, including the Georgia-based Republican political consultant Jacob Hawkins.
“His conduct here is antithetical to his message,” Hawkins wrote on X. “He’s not a man of morals, he’ll throw a female staffer’s name into the media without proof or caution for her to be thrown to the wolves.”
The Harp jab was only one piece of a speech packed with broadsides at Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins — and warnings of more to come.
Ossoff teased more bipartisan endorsements, predicted that Collins’ string of embarrassing controversies is only beginning and dismissed his attacks over culture war policies as yawn-worthy distractions.
“Tech titans dig bunkers and warn us the new intelligence they’re training could lead to mass joblessness or human extinction,” Ossoff said. “Our Congress debates ballrooms and youth sports.”
Things to know
Good morning! We’re 78 days away from the midterms. The last day to register to vote is Oct. 5. Here are three things to know for today:
- The proposed $20 billion data center complex from OpenAI, maker of the popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, is one of Georgia’s largest-ever economic development projects, Drew Kann reports.
- A fiercely contested lawsuit more than a decade ago cleared the way for the election of three Black officials in Fayette County. Now, some fear a weakened Voting Rights Act could cause those gains to be reversed, Tamar Hallerman reports.
- Using artificial intelligence to scan public databases, a Princeton University researcher has exploited a known weakness in Georgia’s voting system to identify, with fair certainty, how more than 2,200 people voted in Cherokee and Heard counties in the May primaries, Caleb Groves reports.
Georgia 2028
Another potential 2028 contender is coming to Georgia.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords will host a Monday fundraiser for Tanya Miller, giving the Democratic nominee for attorney general a high-profile boost. He’s also planning to stump with Ossoff in metro Atlanta.
Miller outraised Republican nominee Brian Strickland during the last reporting period, a notable exception in a period when GOP candidates held the edge in most other statewide contests.
The host committee also includes Jason Carter, the party’s 2014 nominee for governor; House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley; Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II and more than two dozen Democratic legislators.
Kelly’s visit adds him to the growing parade of prominent Democrats testing their influence in one of the nation’s premier battleground states.
Clapback
Democratic nominee for governor Keisha Lance Bottoms pushed back against her Republican rival Rick Jackson’s criticism of her travel to the wealthy enclave of Martha’s Vineyard.
“Wow, I thought interstate travel was legal,” Bottoms said during a chat Friday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in downtown Atlanta.
Bottoms said she proudly owns land there and in Georgia. The former Atlanta mayor threw a jab back at Jackson, saying she’s never flown a private jet there, like she said he has.
Bottoms noted Martha’s Vineyard has long been a place where Black people have gone to seek refuge and joy, noting the “underlying issues” Jackson’s ad infers.
Bottoms spent part of her chat with NBC News’ Blayne Alexander talking about inspiring young Black women to pursue barrier-breaking roles, as she is doing in her campaign to become the first Black woman to be elected governor in the U.S.
She said that she has talked shop with Stacey Abrams, who ran twice for governor. Bottoms noted she has tried to learn lessons from other women who have run for statewide or national office.
Later that day, Bottoms made some news when she said she’ll push for more transparency on state government contracts if elected — and that she’ll create a state inspector modeled after a City Hall post her administration created.
Resource hub
Georgia Democrats stand to benefit from a new initiative pushed by the national party intended to infuse resources into southern states to help them organize and be more competitive.
The Southern States Resource Hub will include staffing and fundraising support, assistance using data to guide strategy and help with crafting the right messaging for voters. The initiative is partly in response to the Supreme Court’s Callais decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and resulted in southern states, likely to include Georgia later this year, redrawing maps to help more Republicans get elected.
“As Donald Trump and Republicans focus on attacking democracy in the South while continuing to raise prices and cut healthcare, Democrats are focused on expanding opportunity, building a stronger coalition of voters, and winning races up and down the ballot,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “The new DNC Southern States Resource Hub is a historic investment to ensure Democratic state parties in the South have the resources they need to compete, protect voters, and win, because lasting power is built long before Election Day.”
The resource hub comes on top of other Democratic Party initiatives like the State Partnership Program that increased the monthly allocation to state parties by $5,000 a month to $17,500. and the Red State Fund, which gives Republican-controlled states another $5,000 a month.
Listen up
Today on the “Politically Georgia” podcast Greg Bluestein answers listener questions about Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ refusal to endorse Jackson, the long odds of Democrats taking back the Georgia House and the growing fight over data center development.
You can listen and subscribe to “Politically Georgia” for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Have a question or comment for the show? Email us at politicallygeorgia@ajc.com or give us a call at 770-810-5297 and you could be featured on a future episode.
Today in Washington
- Trump will meet at the White House with Ryder Williams, a California lifeguard whose heroic rescue was caught on video.
- The House and Senate are in recess.
No endorsement
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he endorsed Jackson as a show of unity after falling short in his own campaign for the Republican nomination for Georgia governor.
But he doesn’t plan to endorse the party’s other nominees on the ballot, including Collins, he said during an appearance at the NABJ’s convention on Friday. Raffensperger said he generally doesn’t endorse as the person in charge of overseeing the state’s elections, but he made an exception for Jackson.
“I felt that it was appropriate for me to do that because, at the end of the day, I need people to understand there is no personal animosity in this,” he said. “I am moving forward; I am now back as secretary of state, and we are making sure there are free and fair and fast elections.”
Shoutouts
Today’s birthday:
- State Rep. Lydia Glaize, D-Fairburn.
Want a birthday shoutout in the Politically Georgia newsletter? There’s a form for that. It’s not just birthdays. We’re also interested in new jobs, engagements, birth announcements, etc.
Before you go
Housing construction in Savannah has surged to meet a projected need of 41,000 new units by the end of the decade as demand is driven by the Georgia Ports Authority, Hyundai and the regions other economic drivers.
That’ll do it for us today. As always, you can send your best scoops, gossip and insider information to greg.bluestein@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com, patricia.murphy@ajc.com and adam.beam@ajc.com.