ATLANTA (AP) – As a teenager, Jon Ossoff was inspired by the central role that John Lewis played in the fight for racial equality when the civil rights icon was in his 20s.
He was amazed at Lewis’s life, he told the Associated Press in December, particularly how someone “so young” had achieved such a prominent position as chairman of the Nonviolent Student Coordination Committee.
At 33, the millennial Democrat will take on his own leadership cloak after being one of two candidates to help the party sweep the US Senate’s run-off elections, a victory that sealed Democratic control of the chamber. Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue in the second round on Tuesday after neither he nor Perdue received 50% of the vote in November.
This is Ossoff’s first public election and he will be the youngest member of the Senate. But he never allowed youth and inexperience to be barriers to his aspirations.
In 2017, at the age of 29, he ran for Congress in Georgia in a closely watched race as an early referendum on President Donald Trump.
Although he lost, he broke fundraising records and competed in a once-trusted competitive Republican district. For his Senate campaign, he took a more aggressive approach. Its platform was blatantly liberal, demanding a $ 15 minimum wage, a “public option” government health plan and a new voting right to restore federal oversight of state electoral laws.
He also launched a ferocious attack on Perdue while ignoring his opponent’s exaggerated claim that he was pursuing a “radical socialist agenda”. In a debate in October, he called the 71-year-old former corporate executive “a con man” who used the COVID-19 pandemic to protect his stock portfolio while minimizing the seriousness of the virus. Perdue insisted that the allegations were false.
Ossoff is smart, has a “good heart” and will strive to be a good senator, said Sarah Riggs Amico, a Democrat who ran for vice governor in Georgia in 2018 and challenged Ossoff in the Senate primaries.
“The reality is that the government works best when people from various backgrounds come to the table,” she said.
Voter Kaitlynn Poborsky, 28, said she chose Ossoff because she is looking for change and a senator who is passionate about dealing with coronavirus and climate change. She didn’t care about his age.
“I think we need young people,” she said outside a polling place in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday. “The people in charge are very old.”
Ossoff said that his first run taught him the importance of the grassroots campaign and ignoring “painting by numbers, the variety of absurdities that the GOP throws at me.”
“I don’t pay any attention to that and I really couldn’t care less what they say,” he told the AP last month. His campaign declined an interview request on Wednesday.
Raised in a wealthy Atlanta family, Ossoff was 16 when he read Lewis’ memoirs of the civil rights movement, “Walking With the Wind”. He wrote a letter to Lewis, and Lewis offered him a summer job.
Lewis referred him to Hank Johnson, an Atlanta attorney who ran for Congress in 2006. Ossoff, a graduate of Georgetown University, became the fourth member of Johnson’s campaign team. Lewis would continue to be a mentor.
Ossoff worked for five years on Johnson’s team in Washington. In 2013, after Ossoff inherited his late grandfather’s money, he invested in a small London-based film production company. Insight TWI funds investigative documentaries and sells them to broadcasters, including the BBC. Ossoff is the CEO of the company.
In a victory speech on Wednesday, Ossoff said he would follow Lewis’ example. The Democrat of Georgia died last year, after serving in Congress for more than three decades.
“This campaign has been about health, jobs and justice for the state’s population, for all people in the state,” he said. “And they will be my guiding principles while I serve this state in the U.S. Senate.”
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Associated Press journalist Haleluya Hadero contributed to this report.