Editor’s note: This profile of Democrat Jon Ossoff is second in a series of stories about major candidates running in November’s election U.S. Senate election. Another story in the series focuses on Republican David Perdue. .
Jon Ossoff wasted little time on a recent Saturday morning as he slipped off his gray mask in the parking lot of an Austell community center.
It was the Democrat’s first in-person campaign rally since June, and the socially distanced gathering of more than 100 party faithful included volunteers who had been boosting Ossoff for more than three years.
“We are at a fork in the road for this country,” he said, kicking off his stump speech. “This election is about who our government serves. Does the government serve the people, or does it serve those who can buy access?”
If there’s a unifying theme to Ossoff’s second congressional bid and his day job running an investigative film company, it’s this.
Washington is profoundly corrupt, he says. Special interests control the agenda. Lawmakers often prioritize the donors who cut large campaign checks over the voters who put them in office.
The poster child of this broken system, in Ossoff’s telling, is U.S. Sen. David Perdue, the first-term Republican incumbent he’s seeking to unseat in November.
Ossoff sharpened his line of attack long before he emerged from June’s Democratic primary with a commanding victory over two well-financed opponents. And the intensity has only increased as the polls have narrowed — recent surveys indicate the race is too close to call.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
But in his quest to become the Senate’s youngest member since 1981, Ossoff, 33, must overcome several major obstacles.
A Democrat hasn’t captured a Georgia U.S. Senate seat in 20 years. GOP-allied groups are plowing millions into the race, pouncing on Ossoff’s every statement to paint him as a left-wing radical.
Looming large is Ossoff’s near-miss bid for the U.S. House in 2017. The special election made him a household name but also linked him in the minds of some voters to unpopular national figures such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“I really don’t sweat the attacks,” Ossoff said, reflecting on the 2017 contest, which broke national fundraising records and became a proxy battle over President Donald Trump. “I’ve sort of been through a race about as intense as a race can get, and it helps me keep things in perspective during this campaign.”
This time around, Ossoff is positioning himself as a reformer who will address the country’s deep-rooted inequalities, expand the Affordable Care Act and bring accountability back to Washington.
Political beginnings
The special election was Ossoff’s first run for elected office, but it wasn’t his first jaunt into politics.
Shortly after reading the memoir of civil rights icon John Lewis as a high schooler, Ossoff wrote the Atlanta congressman asking for a job. Lewis brought the then-16-year-old Northlake resident on for an internship and a few years later steered him toward an underdog U.S. House candidate in need of help on the campaign trail.
It was 2006, and DeKalb County Commissioner Hank Johnson was leveling a primary challenge against Democratic incumbent Cynthia McKinney, who had stoked controversy after a run-in with a U.S. Capitol police officer and by implying 9/11 was a hoax.
Johnson prevailed and offered Ossoff, then a Georgetown University student, a position as a legislative aide. Ossoff stayed on Capitol Hill for six years, an experience he describes as educational and rewarding but also “deeply disillusioning.”
Johnson at the time was a member of the powerful Armed Services Committee, and Ossoff became disheartened by the sway defense contractors held with the panel. He also chafed at the nonstop fundraising and extent to which party leaders and the executive branch called the shots.
Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Ossoff used an inheritance from his late grandfather to buy an ownership stake in a small London-based investigative film company he had once interned for, which he renamed Insight TWI.
He had escaped the Washington political game, but Trump’s election was a call to action. Ossoff had been in touch with Lewis and Johnson in early 2017 when Georgia Congressman Tom Price was tapped to be secretary of health and human services, opening up his suburban U.S. House seat.
Ossoff entered the special election shortly thereafter, armed with endorsements from Lewis and Johnson, a “make Trump furious” message and $250,000 in seed money.
Pensive, circumspect and unknown to Georgia politicos, the then-29-year-old was an unlikely candidate for a district that Republicans had safely carried for decades. But Democrats from across the country rallied around him to vent their frustration over Trump, donating tens of millions to his campaign — an unheard of sum for a newcomer — and Ossoff nearly won the race outright due to a fractured GOP field.
When he faced Karen Handel in the runoff, Ossoff pivoted to the center to try to win support from moderates and disaffected Republicans but ultimately came up short following visits on behalf of Handle by Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Return to the trail
In the years since, Ossoff dove back into his documentary work and married his high school sweetheart, OB-GYN resident Alisha Kramer. The state’s strict new abortion restrictions and his company’s films exposing international corruption sparked his interest in challenging Perdue.
Ossoff’s campaign has since raised millions toward that goal, even as the pandemic left him doing most of his work from his Grant Park home.
The candidate on the (mostly virtual) trail this year is much more at ease than the one who traversed the Atlanta’s northern suburbs three years ago. Ossoff is more unapologetic about embracing liberal policy ideas than his Democratic predecessors during past statewide races. And where he once hesitated to hit Trump directly, he now pulls no punches as he seeks to tie Perdue to his White House ally.
One recent campaign ad features clips of Perdue echoing Trump’s messaging about the relative lack of harm of the coronavirus even as fatalities climbed.
“Two-hundred-thousand Americans have died from a disease that he told us posed low risk to our health,” Ossoff said of Perdue.
Like many Democratic candidates this year, health care is one of Ossoff’s top campaign issues. He’s vowed to safeguard Obamacare and add a public option, and he uses the issue to frame what’s at stake in the current Supreme Court confirmation battle.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
His efforts to appeal to rural Georgians — he recently ran an ad pledging to protect the Second Amendment and the state’s military bases — have been subject to ridicule from the GOP, as has his youth and family’s wealth, despite the fact that Perdue is a multimillionare. The Perdue campaign has also seized on comments Ossoff made linking federal law enforcement funding to achieving certain standards as evidence that he wants to defund the police. Ossoff flatly denies that.
With Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel also in the race, it’s possible the contest will be extended into a January runoff.
Win or lose, Ossoff has carved out space for himself in Georgia’s history books as the state’s most prominent millennial politician. His 2017 race also engaged a new generation of female activists in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, some of whom have since run for — and won — elected office.
One of them is Angelika Kausche. Ossoff was the first candidate she actively campaigned for, and the experience helped lay the groundwork for her own successful bid for a Johns Creek-based seat in the Statehouse a year later.
“All of a sudden we realized we have a network we can use and utilize to turn out the Democratic vote," Kausche said, recounting the special election. "I think without Jon’s strong personality and drive it wouldn’t have happened.”
GEORGIA’S U.S. SENATE ELECTION BATTLE
This profile of Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Jon Ossoff is part of a series of stories about major candidates running in November’s election. The Republican incumbent he hopes to unseat, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, was profiled in Monday’s AJC. Other stories focused on the candidates to fill the final two years of former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term.