ATLANTA – When 30-year-old Jon Ossoff entered the national political scene in 2017, he didn’t talk much about Donald Trump.
In the first major Trump-era special election – in the same district Newt Gingrich once held – Ossoff conspicuously avoided attacks on the then-new president. He presented himself as a centrist, not a liberal #Resistance; a candidate more concerned about wasteful government spending than Trump.
More than three years after that defeat, the candidate once called the “high priest” of courtesy The Washington Post has changed his sermon. Where he once lashed out at Trump, Ossoff – now facing Senator David Perdue (R-GA) in a second race with control of the US Senate at stake – sees the Democrats’ all-important campaign in Georgia as a way to stop. ” a figure like Donald Trump ”of“ achieve[ing] power by simply threatening to burn everything down. “
And he’s not only targeting Trump in sharp terms, but Trumpism as well.
“I think leadership like Donald Trump’s only grows from soil that has already been poisoned,” Ossoff said in an interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday after a campaign event in downtown Atlanta. So these races are about whether in the next Congress this coming administration will have the capacity to drive and enact legislation that serves the interests of working families, and whether we can get things done that help people determine whether there is a resurgence of reactionary, right-wing extremism on the way. “
The change in Ossoff’s rhetoric not only demonstrates his evolution as a candidate. It also reflects how dramatically the political terrain has shifted in Georgia and across the country during four years of Trump in the White House.
On his way to the White House, Joe Biden took Georgia with 12,000 votes, the first victory of a Democratic presidential candidate here since 1992. He won the sixth congressional district to lose Ossoff by 11 points in 2017; Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath has now twice defeated Karen Handel, the Republican who first defeated Ossoff there.
To win in Georgia, Ossoff and Raphael Warnock – the secretary to challenge Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) – are betting on the new formula, not the formula that seemed ripe for 2017 or the Republican playbook that Southern Democrats spent decades. is used . Those who know Ossoff well say they wish he had done this sooner.
“I think what has happened to Jon from his original run to now, he really has found his authentic voice and who he is, and not just what the consultant class thinks he should be,” said Senator Jen Jordan, a Democrat whose district falls within the Sixth Congress and a friend of Ossoff. “The ripening of the convention race until now – and he was a good congressional candidate – the ripening was really incredible to watch,” she said.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), Ossoff’s former Capitol Hill boss, said his former assistant also relied on consultants tough in his 2017 run, “but this time he’s got all the shots.”
“He’s been a hands-on candidate,” Johnson told The Daily Beast. “He has not left this campaign to anyone but himself.”
The question now is whether the 33-year-old can steer himself to victory in perhaps the most intensely hyped Senate campaign in recent memory. He is seen as a tougher race than Warnock, who is up against Loeffler, an appointed senator whose short tenure has been marked by controversy over her financial transactions. First elected in 2014, Perdue has a name in Georgian politics – his cousin, Sonny, was a governor for two terms – and nearly prevented a second round against Ossoff by getting nearly 50 percent of the vote in the general election from November.
But Ossoff is trying to catch up as a GOP civil war unfolds. Since November 3, Trump has focused on Georgia as ground zero for his election loss, sowing widespread mistrust in the state’s electoral system, hammering elected GOP officials and sounding the alarm in the party that its most devoted supporters remain at home in January’s second round. . .
“What you’re starting to see now is some Republicans peeking their heads over the parapet as the dust settles on the president, saying, ‘We’ve just been hit hardest by a sitting president seeking reelection since Roosevelt crushed Hoover in 1932,’ perhaps the Trump family’s vise grip on the GOP 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 he’s defeated. “
But while Ossoff can speak more freely and critically about the Republican Party in Trump’s era, he insists he not shut the door on working with its members. The Democrat said there may be twofold energy to rethink major economic policies, and suggested that he make it a priority to work with GOP senators on that front – most notably Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), an outspoken Trumpist who was nonetheless the loudest Republican voice pushing for $ 2,000 direct checks as part of a coronavirus bill.
“There are some people, I think in the Senate, including perhaps Mr Hawley, who see that perhaps a two-pronged coalition can be built to rethink some of these things,” said Ossoff.
Should he be elected, Ossoff would likely enter a senate narrowly under democratic control. And for that very reason, his voice would be immensely important to any legislative or enactment effort for the chamber.
To his critics, he’s seen as a rubber stamp to Joe Biden. And during his 2020 campaign, Ossoff made it clear that he would be a loyal ally of the president-to-be. He has welcomed Biden’s presence on the campaign trail, and his ads and speeches emphasize that his victory would make Biden’s agenda possible.
But Ossoff still insisted that his critics are wrong. With the caution that has shaped much of his political rise, he portrays himself as someone who wouldn’t march with his party. Sitting in the United States Senate, the new administration must understand that I will take a hostile approach where appropriate, and that I will not be just a partisan soldier, he said.
Ossoff argued that he would be a force to pressure Biden on a variety of cases, saying he would be “ critical and public ” if Biden did not pursue climate change reforms, campaign finance, economic policy, government ethics and other areas. embraces. .
Passing on where he disagreed with Biden, Ossoff did not mention a specific area of divergence. But he expressed concerns about the direction of the Biden government in a few general areas, notably financial regulation and tax policy. The former vice president, who himself is considered amicable to major financial institutions, has not filled his cabinet and administration with figures ready to take a confrontational stance on Wall Street, in the eyes of some on the left wing of the party. People on Wall Street are “raving” about Biden’s selections, a Goldman Sachs executive told Bloomberg.
“I’m concerned about the impact financial services could have in the coming years and incoming administration,” said Ossoff. “I don’t want to continue in business as usual, where economic incentives and efforts to support economic growth are mainly about subsidizing the financial services industry.”
While Ossoff has tried to throw off the shadows of his first candidacy, he can’t get very far on the campaign trail without escaping the political moment that launched him.
At an “Artists for Ossoff” event in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta on Sunday, some of Ossoff’s early supporters were in attendance. One of them, Deb Powell, a beer distributor from the suburbs of Johns Creek, remembers the early days of 2017 when her group of “ suburban housewives ” held a meet and greet for Ossoff. They were expecting “maybe” five people; 135 showed up.
“We have come full circle for us,” Powell told The Daily Beast. ‘He’s doing great. We are delighted to work for him. “
Jordan, the Democratic senator for whom Ossoff campaigned in her own special election in 2017, said that race was educational – not only to her, but to others, and clearly to Ossoff as well.
It showed her that he was able to run to a higher office and do so under an intense spotlight. When DC Democrats asked her opinion in 2019 who could take on Perdue, Jordan was quick to answer.
“Everyone assumed that Ossoff would not succeed, but I was never that person,” she said. “I said if anyone could get it done it would be Jon.”
Indeed, perhaps no Democrat in the Trump era received as much incoming as Ossoff. In 2017, Republican groups spent more than $ 16 million chasing him as a silver spoon resume padder with no business in Congress.
Just like Ossoff’s approach, their playbook has also changed. In 2020, outside GOP groups – which have posted $ 61 million in attack ads against Ossoff – have gone to great lengths to portray him as a far-left sympathizer of the Chinese Communist Party.
Despite Republican cracks that Ossoff is a thin, empty suit, they clearly don’t underestimate him, said Brian Robinson, a GOP strategist in Georgia. “They don’t belittle him in paid advertising,” he told The Daily Beast. “The campaigns have shown that they know that Georgia is competitive and that it is a serious challenge to beat any well-funded Democrat.” Ossoff raised more than $ 106 million from October 15 to December 16.
Robinson also noted that, despite his frequent appearances on TV, Ossoff’s relentless message has provided little fodder for attack ads. “Look at what Republicans have cut and published – they’re not quotes from Ossoff, they’re quotes from AOC, Chuck Schumer,” he said.
A previous attack ad from Perdue was edited to make Ossoff, a Jew, look like he had a bigger nose. Perdue’s campaign said it was an accident. But in their only debate, in October, Ossoff devastated Perdue for playing anti-Semitic tropes; the GOP senator later hit a scheduled Dec 6 debate. about.
Ossoff linked those ads to the ads that Republicans have run against Warnock, which he and others have called “ racist. ” Ossoff, former intern of the late Rep. John Lewis, pitched it as part of a long-standing strategy to “prevent the emergence of a multi-racial coalition that requires equal economic opportunity and access to healthcare.”
“This is the Old South versus the New South,” Ossoff said of the GOP ads. ‘I mean it’s so predictable and exhausting. And it doesn’t seem to me to be effective at the moment. “