ATLANTA – When a 30-year-old named Jon Ossoff burst onto the national political scene in 2017, he didn’t talk much about Donald Trump.
Running in the first major special election of the Trump era – in the same district that Newt Gingrich once held – Ossoff visibly avoided attacks on the then new president. He introduced himself as a centrist, not a #Resistance liberal; a candidate more concerned with wasted government spending than Trump.
More than three years after that defeat, the candidate once called the “high priest” of civility for The Washington Post changed his sermon. Where he once controlled Trump, Ossoff – now facing Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) in a runoff with US Senate control on the line – frames the Democratic campaign in Georgia as a way to stop “a figure like Donald Trump ”of“ reaching[ing] simply threatening to burn everything. “
And it is not just Trump that he is aiming for in precise terms, but also Trumpism.
“I think leadership like Donald Trump only grows out of soil that has already been poisoned,” said Ossoff in an interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday after a campaign event in downtown Atlanta. “So, these disputes are about whether this new government at the next Congress will have the capacity to govern and enact legislation that serves the interests of working families, and whether we can do things that help people determine whether in the future there is a resurgence of reactionary right-wing extremism. “
The change in Ossoff’s rhetoric does not just show his evolution as a candidate. It also reflects how dramatically the political terrain has changed in Georgia, and across the country, over Trump’s four years at the White House.
On his way to the White House, Joe Biden beat Georgia by 12,000 votes, the first victory for a Democratic presidential candidate here since 1992. He won the Sixth Congressional District that Ossoff lost in 2017 by an 11 point margin; Democratic MP Lucy McBath has already defeated Karen Handel twice, the Republican who defeated Ossoff there the first time.
To win in Georgia, Ossoff and Raphael Warnock – the minister who challenges Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) – are betting on the new formula, not the one that looked ready for 2017 or the Republican manual used for decades by southern Democrats. Those who know Ossoff well say they would have liked him to have done this before.
“I think what happened to Jon from his original run until now, he really found his authentic voice and who he is, and not just what the consulting class realizes he needs to be,” said state senator Jen Jordan, a Democrat whose district falls within the Sixth Congress and a friend of Ossoff. “The ripening of the race to Congress so far – and he was a good candidate for Congress – was really incredible to watch,” she said.
Deputy Hank Johnson (D-GA), Ossoff’s former capitol chief, said his former aide also relied on consultants heavily in his 2017 run, “but this time, he gave the cards.”
“He’s been an active candidate,” Johnson told The Daily Beast. “He did not leave this campaign in the hands of anyone but himself.”
The question now is whether the 33-year-old can head for victory in what could be the most intensely promoted Senate campaign in recent history. He is seen as having a tougher race than Warnock, who is running against Loeffler, a senator whose short term was marked by controversies over her financial transactions. Perdue, elected for the first time in 2014, is famous in Georgian politics – his cousin, Sonny, was governor for two terms – and almost avoided a runoff against Ossoff by getting close to getting 50 percent of the vote in the November general election .
But Ossoff is trying to regain ground as the Republican Party’s civil war unfolds. Since November 3, Trump has set himself in Georgia as a ground zero for his electoral defeat, sewing widespread distrust of the state’s electoral system, hammering Republican Party elected officials and warning the party that its most devoted supporters can stay home in the second round of January.
“What you’re starting to see now is some Republicans peering over the parapet as dust settles over the president and saying hey, we’ve just taken the worst beating from an incumbent president seeking re-election since Roosevelt crushed Hoover in 1932 , perhaps the Trump family’s control over the Republican Party is not electorally sustainable or sensible, ”said Ossoff. “I want to urge people within the GOP who recognize Trumpism as a dead end and bad for the country to speak up now that it has been defeated.”
But while Ossoff can speak more freely and critically about the Republican Party in the Trump era, he insists he is not closing the door on working with its members. The Democrat said there may be bipartisan energy to rethink major economic policies, and suggested that it would make it a priority to work with Republican senators on that front – specifically mentioning Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a declared Trumpist who, however, has been the loudest Republican voice pressing for $ 2,000 direct checks as part of of a coronavirus relief bill.
“There are some people, I think, in the Senate, including perhaps Hawley, who see that there may actually be a bipartisan coalition that can be built to rethink some of these things,” said Ossoff.
If elected, Ossoff will likely enter the Senate under Democratic control. And for that very reason, your vote would be immensely important for any legislative or confirmation efforts before the chamber.
To his critics, he is seen as a Joe Biden rubber stamp. And during his 2020 campaign, Ossoff made it clear that he would be a faithful ally of the new president. He welcomed Biden’s presence in the campaign, and his difficult announcements and speeches emphasize that his victory would make Biden’s agenda possible.
But Ossoff still emphasized that his critics are wrong. With the caution that defined much of his political rise, he portrays himself as someone who would not march with his party. “Sitting in the United States Senate, the next government needs to understand that I will take an adversarial approach, where appropriate, and not just be a party soldier,” he said.
Ossoff argued that he would be a force pressing Biden on a variety of issues, saying he would be “critical and public” if Biden did not embrace reforms on climate change, campaign financing, economic policy, government ethics and other areas.
When pressed about where he disagreed with Biden, Ossoff did not mention any specific areas of disagreement. But he expressed concern about the direction of the Biden government in some general areas, particularly in financial regulation and fiscal policy. The former vice president, himself seen as a friend of major financial institutions, did not fill his cabinet and administration with figures prepared to take a confrontational stance with Wall Street, in the eyes of some of the party’s left wing. People on Wall Street are “amazed” by Biden’s choices, a Goldman Sachs executive told Bloomberg.
“I am concerned about the influence that the financial services sector may have in the coming years and the next government,” said Ossoff. “I don’t want to continue business as usual, where the economic stimulus and efforts to support economic growth are primarily aimed at subsidizing the financial services industry.”
Although Ossoff tried to get rid of the shadows of his first candidacy for the job, he cannot go very far in the campaign without escaping the political moment that launched him.
At an “Artists for Ossoff” event in Atlanta’s Little Five Points neighborhood on Sunday, Ossoff’s audience included some of his early supporters. One of them, Deb Powell, a beer distributor in the Johns Creek suburb, recalled the early days of 2017, when his group of “suburban housewives” met Ossoff. They expected “maybe” five people; 135 appeared.
“It’s a full circle for us,” Powell told The Daily Beast. “He’s doing great. We look forward to working for him ”.
Jordan, the Democratic state senator that Ossoff campaigned for in her own 2017 special election, said the race was instructive – not just for her, but for others, and clearly, for Ossoff as well.
This showed her that he was able to run for a higher position and do it in an intense spotlight. When DC Democrats asked in 2019 for their opinion on who might face Perdue, Jordan had a quick response.
“Everyone thought Ossoff wouldn’t be able to do that, but I was never that person,” she said. “I said if anyone could do it, it would be Jon.”
In fact, perhaps no Democrat alone in the Trump era received as many tickets as Ossoff. In 2017, Republican groups spent more than $ 16 million going after him as an unimportant CV rower, with no business in Congress.
Like Ossoff’s approach, his handbook has also changed. In 2020, groups outside the Republican Party – who set aside $ 61 million in attack ads against Ossoff – bet on a strategy to paint him as a far-left sympathizer with the Chinese Communist Party.
Despite Republicans’ criticism that Ossoff is a flimsy empty suit, they clearly are not underestimating him, said Brian Robinson, a strategist for the Republican Party in Georgia. “They are not underestimating him in paid advertising,” he told The Daily Beast. “The campaigns showed that they know that Georgia is competitive and that defeating any well-funded Democrat is a serious challenge.” Ossoff raised more than $ 106 million from October 15 to December 16.
Robinson also noted that, despite his frequent TV appearances, the tireless Ossoff message gave little food for attack ads. “Look at what the Republicans cut and published – they are not quotes from Ossoff, they are quotes from AOC, Chuck Schumer,” he said.
A previous announcement of Perdue’s attack was edited to make Ossoff, a Jew, look like he had a bigger nose. Perdue’s campaign said it was an accident. But in his only debate in October, Ossoff attacked Perdue for playing with anti-Semitic troops; the Republican senator later skipped a debate scheduled for December 6.
Ossoff linked these ads to the ads that Republicans ran against Warnock, which he and others called “racists”. A former intern with the late Dep. John Lewis, Ossoff launched it as part of a long-standing strategy to “prevent the emergence of a multiracial coalition that demands equal economic opportunity and access to health care”.
“This is the Old South versus the New South,” said Ossoff of the Republican Party’s announcements. “I mean, it is so predictable and tiring. And I don’t think it is effective. “