ATLANTA — On paper, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia should be among the most vulnerable incumbents this year. He is the only Senate Democrat defending a seat in a state President Trump won in 2024.
But the race has not turned into the nail-biter most anticipated, and Democrats outside Georgia are taking notice – at a time when the party is debating how to escape the political wilderness and win back a majority in Congress.
"He reminds me of Obama, honestly," says 28-year-old Courtney Rogers, who came of age as the Obama years gave way to Trump. In Ossoff, the first millennial senator, Rogers sees traces of an earlier era.
Rogers was waiting to buy an Ossoff T-shirt at an Atlanta rally this month. Nearby Rebecca Bruno and Beth Louise arrived already wearing theirs.
The two friends met while knocking doors for Ossoff's 2020 Senate campaign, when he and the Rev. Raphael Warnock flipped Georgia's Senate seats blue for the first time in a generation.
Ossoff arrived on the national stage three years earlier as he came close to flipping a suburban Atlanta House seat in an early test of the Trump resistance.
Prior to that race, Ossoff had run a documentary film company focused on corruption — now a throughline in campaign speeches alleging graft in Trump's orbit.
"Our task is not just to contain his wickedness but to cure the rot that gave rise to it," Ossoff told the Atlanta crowd. "That this broken moment is an opening not for restoration, but for reformation."
"He just knows how to boil it down," Bruno says, adding it also does not hurt that he is handsome.
These speeches, which Ossoff writes himself, have become a sensation among liberal voters, fueling talk of a presidential bid. Despite running in a purple state, where winning purely Democratic voters is not enough to carry a statewide race, Ossoff does not hold back in his blistering takedowns of Trump.
"He doesn't want to do the job," Ossoff said. "He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar."
That brief mention of Trump aide Natalie Harp ricocheted around the internet for days, prompting Trump to respond, calling Ossoff "Pee-wee Herman."
MS NOW host Chris Hayes, author of the The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource, says lines like this, filmed from multiple angles and clipped for social media, exemplify how Ossoff has managed to remain substantive and break through a crowded media environment that tends to reward the outrageous.
"Be provocative and say crazy stuff, that doesn't really work for him," Hayes says. "But he figured out how to produce this kind of viral attention, while also being controlled."
Hayes says it helps that at 39, Ossoff is one of a few people in American politics whose political career was fully born after the rise of Trump, a master of the attention economy. "That probably makes you better equipped to operate in this environment than those thinking about how it used to be," he says.
The viral videos have another upside: the attention has helped generate massive fundraising.
"Someone caring about me"
None of this entirely explains polls suggesting Ossoff's lead in battleground Georgia. One reason some prominent Republicans have offered is Ossoff's focus on constituent services. Among his endorsers are the Republican mayors of Valdosta and Tifton in South Georgia.
"My goal from the moment I was elected has been to serve the state with excellence," Ossoff told NPR at a campaign stop in coastal Brunswick. "To deliver for every part of the state, for everybody in the state, no matter their politics."
That includes the rural, mostly Republican southeast Georgia town of Jesup, where 81 year-old Nancy Lancy lives on a few wooded acres along a creek where she feeds the deer every night. When Lancy's husband died after a struggle with dementia, she was exhausted. Then came battles with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
"Unbelievable stuff that I hadn't even thought about because I had been thinking from minute to minute," she says.
Then Lancy saw a newspaper notice that Ossoff's team would be in town offering help. Lancy says a kind staffer got to work on her case, kept her updated and eventually resolved her issues.
"It was amazing," Lancy says. "This was a new experience, to have someone caring about me."
This responsiveness is why Brunswick Mayor Pro Tem Lance Sabbe did not hesitate in making his choice for Senate, despite having voted for Democrats and Republicans in the past. He says Ossoff is often the first to call after a natural disaster and is well-versed on local projects.
"He doesn't flip open his notes," Sabbe says. "It's like he honestly cares and knows."
Ossoff has become known for his direct questioning of Trump administration officials during committee hearings, including a viral exchange pressing Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, on who won the 2020 election.
But Ossoff has also dedicated much of his Senate investigative focus to bipartisan probes on more staid topics like abuse in the foster care system, prison conditions and maternal mortality.
To be sure, some of Ossoff's strength with independents may be more about voters' discomfort with his Republican opponent, Congressman Mike Collins, who falsely insists Trump won the 2020 election in Georgia and has not disavowed his son-in-law's social media posts containing white nationalist content and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Still, most Republicans are not flocking to Ossoff, as Collins tries to tie him to the far-left of the party and questions his experience. "This guy's a trust fund kid," Collins said at a July rally in Augusta. "He's never had a real job in his life."
"He doesn't fit into a box"
Collins has also tried to exploit a rift among Jewish voters over Ossoff's votes on several occasions to block sales of certain bombs, rifles and bulldozers to the Israeli military, citing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conduct of the war in Gaza. Ossoff has voted against similar measures at other times.
Ossoff, Georgia's first Jewish senator, says his support for Israel is ironclad. That commitment has been questioned by some Jewish Georgians, who have criticized some of his votes.
Valerie Habif, who co-founded the Jewish Democratic Women's Salon in Atlanta, which has more than 1,500 members in its private Facebook group, says while some did feel hurt by these votes, most Jewish Democrats are not single issue voters and are standing by Ossoff. She says those drifting away from him are a vocal minority.
Andrew Lewis, who is active in several Atlanta Jewish institutions and describes himself as an independent voter, says he does not expect to agree with Ossoff on every vote and sees him weighing each one with nuance. He says like many Atlanta Jews, Israel is important to him, but so are other issues.
"There is also a connection in Atlanta to the civil rights movement and the tradition of building relationships across religious and political differences," Lewis says. "To do all of those things can be complicated."
This debate is one of many the Democratic coalition is grappling with.
On a historic square in Savannah, with live oaks cloaked in Spanish moss, Aaron Whitley, the Chatham County Democratic Party chair, says Ossoff has managed to transcend those fissures better than most.
"I don't think you can put a label on him because he doesn't fit into a box," Whitley says.
Whitley says it is not that Ossoff takes positions based on political expediency. What he means is that Ossoff is not rigid. That has allowed Democrats of varying views to see themselves reflected in him.
"I think Senator Ossoff and Senator Warnock have emerged as people who are willing to meet the moment," Whitley says.
Maintaining that sense of universal appeal though could be trickier – or impossible – to replicate under a national microscope, outside the context of Georgia or by a different candidate.
Ossoff voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act, a measure that would make it easier for federal immigration officials to detain and deport those without legal status who are charged with crimes. The legislation is named after a Georgia nursing student killed by a Venezuelan man in the U.S. without legal status.
Democratic primary voters outside Georgia may be less forgiving of that vote than Georgia Democrats, who understand the battleground dynamics Ossoff is managing in the state.
"Recede into the background"
Despite speculation about an Ossoff presidential run, some Democrats see Warnock as the Georgia Democrat more likely to launch a bid. Warnock is out with a new book and has been touring and campaigning outside Georgia this year, while Ossoff has repeatedly ruled out a run in 2028.
"I think he's more concerned about the effect that his being away from home for prolonged periods of time has on his family," says Rep. Hank Johnson, who recently called up Ossoff to ask about the presidential chatter after hearing a segment raising the possibility on cable news. Ossoff has two daughters under five.
Johnson hired a young Ossoff as a staffer on the recommendation of the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon Ossoff interned for and considered a mentor. Johnson says Ossoff helped launch his Facebook account and write his first post.
When Ossoff returned to Capitol Hill as a senator, he was not a regular on cable news or the Washington social circuit. Johnson says the freshman senator kept a low-profile, until this campaign.
At a pizza shop where the two used to grab a booth and the steak sandwich, Johnson says he looks forward to sharing a meal here again, joking that may require Ossoff donning a disguise.
"Knowing Jon, he's going to be glad to recede into the background after he wins this seat," Johnson says.
Though that could become less likely the more Ossoff's star continues to rise.
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