What Suddenly Made Jon Ossoff Into Such a Democratic Rock Star?

A year ago, Senator Jon Ossoff seemed like he might be a one-hit wonder—elected in that short period from November 2020 to January 2021 when Georgia turned blue, then defeated in his reelection bid and quickly forgotten. Or if he won reelection, always outshined by his home state colleague, the eloquent Raphael Warnock, who still leads the Atlanta church that Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. once helmed.

But over the last year, Ossoff has become a Democratic star. His strong fundraising and poll numbers have made the 39-year-old the clear favorite in his reelection bid this fall, delighting Democrats who worried the party’s 2022 and 2024 struggles in Georgia suggested that the state had gone back to being red. Ossoff’s campaign ads and lines from his speeches are going viral and being borrowed by others in the party, most notably his February denunciation of what he called the “Epstein class.”

And while California Representative Ro Khanna, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, and many other ambitious Democrats are flying to fundraisers across the country and appearing on whatever podcasts they can to drum up interest in their presidential bids, there is considerable buzz about a 2028 Ossoff candidacy—even though the Georgian has done nothing to stoke it. “The moment he wins in November he becomes a front runner for 2028,” journalist Mehdi Hasan tweeted a few months ago, along with a clip of one of Ossoff’s speeches.

Ossoff recently had to publicly declare that he was not considering a presidential run, as such speculation was becoming so loud that it might have hurt his Senate campaign.

How did Ossoff go in less than a decade from baby-faced documentary filmmaker who couldn’t get elected to the House to dream presidential candidate for some Democratic insiders? A combination of luck, skill, and circumstance.

Ossoff’s political career didn’t look promising when it started nine years ago. He ran in a special election for a U.S. House seat in the Atlanta suburbs in early 2017. It was the first campaign for Ossoff, who had worked as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill before leading a film company called Insight. The 30-year-old candidate vastly out-raised most of his rivals and picked up endorsements from Stacey Abrams, the late John Lewis, and other prominent figures in Georgia Democratic politics. But after qualifying for a runoff, he was narrowly defeated by Republican Karen Handel. Some Democrats felt Ossoff had lost a winnable race because he didn’t have a clear message or strong platform. His defeat looked even worse after another Democrat, Lucy McBath, beat Handel in that same district in November 2018.

Ossoff didn’t give up, though. That House race drew national attention, because it was one of the first elections after Donald Trump’s surprising 2016 victory. So Ossoff had cultivated a national fundraising base. He used that to run for U.S. Senate in 2020 and win a competitive Democratic primary. He and Warnock then effectively campaigned together to defeat two incumbent Republicans in the January 2021 runoff that delivered a U.S. Senate majority to Democrats. Ossoff was officially declared the winner of his race on January 6, 2021—the day of the Trump-led insurrection.

At the time, Ossoff’s victory seemed as much about Abrams, Warnock, Trump, and Joe Biden as his own political skills. A backlash against Trump in the Atlanta suburbs and Biden’s popularity back then appeared to have boosted both Ossoff and Warnock. Abrams had spent years mobilizing voters in the state and convincing Democratic donors that Georgia was winnable. And having a charismatic Black candidate (Warnock) running at the same time no doubt helped Ossoff win more African American votes in heavily Black Georgia.

But his Senate career suggests that Ossoff is quite savvy on his own. He seems to have started preparing for reelection from the moment he arrived on Capitol Hill, taking a number of steps that would appeal to independent and even conservative-leaning voters in Georgia. He and his aides have focused less on making national news than on being hyperresponsive to Georgia residents. Ossoff told The Washington Post that each week he calls a few Georgians who have contacted his office for help to assess how well his aides are doing in constituent service. In his committee work, Ossoff has worked with his Republican colleagues on investigating and issuing reports on government malfeasance, such as substandard military housing. Ossoff largely voted the party line when Biden was in office, but he didn’t take many high-profile stands that would paint him as super-progressive.

Early last year, after Trump’s win, Ossoff took even more aggressive steps to inoculate himself politically. He supported the Laken Riley Act, an immigration bill written by congressional Republicans that calls for the detention of undocumented immigrants if they are arrested for minor crimes like burglary, even if they have not yet been convicted. He also voted for a cryptocurrency regulation bill that was favored by the industry but bashed as too light by progressives such as Senator Elizabeth Warren. In terms of policy, these are terrible votes. But Laken Riley was a nursing student in Georgia who was killed by an undocumented immigrant. Cryptocurrency companies spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat their political enemies. So those stances were perhaps politically necessary in Georgia, as Ossoff seemed likely to face one of his state’s most popular politicians: Governor Brian Kemp.

Then Ossoff got lucky. Kemp was elected in 2018 over Abrams and defeated her fairly handily in their 2022 rematch. He gained a reputation as a reasonable Republican by refusing to go along with Trump’s attempts in 2020 to illegally overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia, which helped him with the state’s swing voters. Republicans in Washington were urging him to run against Ossoff. If Kemp had jumped in, Ossoff would likely be in a very hard race right now. A poll conducted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last April showed Kemp narrowly ahead of Ossoff in a hypothetical matchup. But last May, Kemp bowed out. Ossoff’s solid poll numbers and fundraising no doubt played a role. It would not have been a cakewalk for Kemp. But ultimately, the governor suggested he simply didn’t want to run for the Senate.

At the same time, Trump spent the last year seeming to do everything possible to be unpopular, even in states like Georgia that backed him in 2024. The Economist estimates the president’s net approval in the state is -22.

With Kemp on the sidelines, Trump tanking in the polls, and Georgia Republicans stuck in a tense primary with three leading candidates, Ossoff has had the perfect opportunity to position himself for the general election. And he’s taking advantage of it. On the campaign trail, Ossoff is connecting the Epstein scandal, the various ways that Trump and his allies are enriching themselves, the administration’s Medicaid cuts, high grocery and gas prices, the war in Iran, and other issues into a broader narrative of an elite led by Trump that is screwing over average Americans. In the senator’s words, there’s an Epstein class, a “Mar-a-Lago mafia,” and “government of, by, and for the ultra-rich.” While other Democrats fixate solely on affordability, Ossoff also constantly uses another word: corruption.

“The Mar-a-Lago mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights, but corruption in America runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump. Because how does American politics really work? It’s coin-operated. Money goes in, favors come out. It’s been running on secret money, corporate money, billionaire money. Both sides,” he says on the campaign trail.

While Ossoff regularly bashes Trump, he’s trying to define the core divide in U.S. politics as a wealthy elite versus average Americans, not Republicans versus Democrats. So the senator said earlier this year, “Trump was supposed to fight for the working class. Instead, he’s literally closing rural clinics and hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk.” That’s a reference to a conservative billionaire but also a liberal one. The Epstein class invokes not only Trump but also super-wealthy individuals connected to the disgraced financier, such as Bill Gates and Democrat politicians like Bill Clinton.

“He knows how to write, knows how to punch up the drama. He has a way with words,” the Journal-Constitution’s Washington bureau chief, Tia Mitchell, told me in a recent episode of Right Now, the New Republic show I host.

Ossoff’s approach is resonating with Democrats outside of Georgia in part because it seems a path out of the constant tensions between the party’s left and center-left. More moderate Democrats like that Ossoff doesn’t push Medicare for All, free college, or other ideas that they worry scare off swing voters. Instead, he uses Bernie Sanders–like rhetoric to advance modest ideas such as Medicare negotiating with drug companies to get lower prices for prescription drugs. More progressive Democrats appreciate Ossoff’s willingness to slam corporations and the super-wealthy. Ossoff talks about the economy constantly, as many party strategists want, but he also condemns Trump’s antidemocratic and racist tendencies in a way that excites party activists.

Ossoff’s newfound acclaim among Democrats of course doesn’t guarantee anything this November. Polls show close hypothetical races between Ossoff and any of his three potential GOP opponents. Republicans will likely pump tens of millions of dollars into the state this fall, both to try to defeat Ossoff and also so Democrats have to spend money in Georgia instead of Alaska, Ohio, and other states they are trying to flip.

But if he wins in November, particularly in a victory by five percentage points or more, the presidential speculation will only increase. Ossoff wouldn’t be the only Democrat who has carried a key swing state in recent years. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer won in 2018 and 2022; Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is likely to cruise to reelection in November; Beshear prevailed in 2019 and 2023 in one of the reddest states in the nation. Like those three, Ossoff can appeal to the party’s moderate voters by emphasizing his electability. But he probably has a better chance of exciting progressives than that trio, as well. The Georgia senator, who is Jewish, has been sharply critical of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. His work as a young staffer on Capitol Hill for two Black and very progressive House members (Lewis and Hank Johnson) will make it easier for Ossoff to hint to the left that he is more in line with them than his voting record suggests. And while Ossoff isn’t pushing Medicare for All or free college, his signature ideas are quite progressive: banning corporate PACs, barring members of Congress from trading stocks, and preventing out-of-state companies from buying too many homes in residential areas.

Ossoff was fairly definitive in ruling out a White House run, telling MS NOW’s Jen Psaki last month, “I have zero interest in running for president in 2028.” On the other hand, many politicians have made such promises and then broken them. Ossoff basically has to say that to ensure victory in his Senate race this November. Mitchell of the Journal-Constitution covers the senator closely, and says that even if he is not running in 2028, Ossoff almost certainly is keeping that option open for the future. “There are going to be certain races that really draw national attention, and his is going to be one of them. So his star is going to rise, and if he wins, he definitely will be part of the conversation,” she said.

And he should be. Democrats have plenty of presidential candidates. Ossoff needs to focus on winning in Georgia. But as Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica has argued, an anti-corruption platform has been critical to defeating authoritarians in elections abroad, most recently in Hungary. It would be great to have a candidate in the Democratic primary pushing that message—particularly if they are young, articulate, and good at winning in swing states. He should keep it to himself for now, but I hope Jon Ossoff hasn’t actually closed the door on a presidential run.