Democrats go back to where they started expelling Trump era: Jon Ossoff

Ossoff’s senate campaign against current Republican David Perdue, with the majority at stake in Georgia’s runoff, shows a major shift in what Democrats believe will work in the most divided places in the country, such as the Sixth District of Georgia in 2017 and the state of Georgia is now in 2020.

Ossoff calls his Senate campaign with fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock ‘the biggest election in the history of the state of Georgia’ in front of a crowd of more than a hundred supporters during a drive-in march here on stage in the rain. like car horns blaring.

“Donald Trump is leaving. He may not know it yet, but he’s on his way out,” Ossoff said. “And Georgia voters sent Donald Trump packing. You did it, Macon. So the question now is what comes next.”

In interviews and during his events, Democratic allies say Ossoff did not necessarily change, but sharpened as a candidate. Stacey Abrams, the unofficial leader of the Democrats in Georgia who ran for governor in 2018, said Ossoff was speaking directly to the biggest concern of voters in his Senate campaign. In an interview, Abrams cites a “steep learning curve” as a candidate and says Ossoff “masterfully mastered it.”

“He has become such an experienced, thoughtful candidate who understands the needs of voters but also understands the art of communication,” Abrams said.

The art created great moments for Ossoff, who called Perdue a ‘crook’ over controversial shares during a debate in the general election, a moment that drew donations and attention on social media in the final days of the election. He used a live Fox News interview last week to escalate an attack against GOP senator Kelly Loeffler, who is acting against Warnock.

While Democrats celebrated Ossoff’s flair in 2020, Republicans mocked the viral moments, pointing out that his moment of debate did not win in November. Perdue narrowly missed the 50 percent threshold to win the race straight, but he won about 88,000 votes ahead of Ossoff. As he tracks down the campaign, Perdue adds his votes and the votes for the Libertarian candidate, arguing that 52.5 percent of voters reject Ossoff State and its ‘Democratic Liberal, Socialist Agenda’.

“In every state other than this one, I have won this race,” Perdue told supporters during a rally on Wednesday, noting that Georgia’s unusual run-off rule requires a majority to win, as opposed to first place. Perdue had to quit the campaign the following day after quarantine after close contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19.

As Ossoff developed as a candidate, he was also at the forefront of broader changes in Georgia that put Perdue in political danger. Six years ago, Perdue won his first election properly while performing strongly in Atlanta’s formerly Republican suburbs – like Cobb County, which voted by 13 percentage points for Perdue six years ago.

But Trump lost the country in 2016 by 2 points. Biden and Ossoff both carried it with double digits in November, although Biden was slight. surpasses the performance of the Senate candidate.

Ossoff’s race helped drive rapid change in the area, which continued when Abrams turned over Governor and Representative Lucy McBath the sixth district for Democrats in Georgia in 2018. Angelika Kausche, a volunteer for Ossoff’s 2017 campaign, said his House campaign gave her and others a way to channel frustration over Trump’s election. Kausche eventually ran for a suburban State House district and overturned.

“We were all disappointed that he did not win, but he came very close and basically showed that this idea that it’s all so Republican is a myth,” Kausche said.

‘There were a lot of people like me who came out of their safe space and said,’ I’m an independent, ‘and said we need to stand up for who we are and the values ​​we represent, and come out and really fight. for Democrats. , “Kausche added, acknowledging Ossoff’s campaign for the shift.

Ossoff has now built on top of the campaign, funded by the $ 100 million he raked for the run-off. His campaign highlighted his efforts to vote, including announcing this week that he was hiring 2,000 young people, mostly black organizers, to conduct in their communities and online outreach.

“What I learned in 2017 was about the power of ordinary people when they work together to build political power and to bring about change,” Ossoff told reporters on Saturday. “This emergence effort that is now taking place in Georgia is totally unprecedented, and the involvement and involvement of young people is unprecedented here in Georgia.”

Ossoff’s Republican approach has also changed somewhat. The party hit him in 2017 because he had a thin resume and lived outside his district. This year, along with the attack on his resume, Republican groups added an onslaught of TV commercials that linked him to China because his film company paid a license fee through a Hong Kong media company to broadcast a documentary. GOP opponents also called Ossoff a socialist, an attack levied against most Democratic candidates in 2020.

“Only a 33-year-old trust fund socialist can spend most of three years on campaigns for which he is not qualified,” said Jesse Hunt, a spokeswoman for the Republican Senate.

Corry Bliss, a GOP agent who led the super-PAC that attacked Ossoff during his House campaign, argued Ossoff was competitive at the time because of his fundraising.

“Raising $ 100 million from California can help someone cover up flaws,” Bliss said. “At the end of the day, the undoing of Jon Ossoff will be the same as in 2017, that he is an unfinished liberal.”

But the Democrats’ Senate hopes Georgia has continued to develop over the past four years. Biden became the first Democrat to carry the state in a presidential race in nearly three decades, after Abrams now lost her race for governor two years ago. The Senate races will be close, but the early rise among black and young voters, Democrats gave some optimism.

After Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz rallied with Ossoff in front of City Hall on Saturday, Girtz said Democratic enthusiasm in Georgia has snowed since Ossoff in 2017 showed how close the party was to breaking through in new locations.

“As a member of the Democratic Party here in Georgia, I feel that we are a train running on the railroad and that we will never again go exclusively to Republican leadership across the country,” Girtz said.

He also attributed to Ossoff that he focused outside the state’s most important population centers, a necessity since Ossoff started the Senate race that was widely known in the Atlanta area, but without a footprint in the rest of Georgia.

Ossoff spoke about his visit to Cuthbert, a small town in the southwest of the state where a rural hospital was closed this year, and stressed his focus on health care. Between the marches in Athens and Macon, Ossoff held an event in Eatonton, a city of 7,000 in the middle of the state.

“These are not major meccas, but you have to activate people in every city of 5,000 and 10,000 and 100,000 people,” Girtz said. “It can not just be Atlanta, Savannah, Augusta, Athens.”