ATLANTA (AP) – As a teenager, Jon Ossoff was inspired by the important role that John Lewis played in the fight for racial equality when the civil rights icon was in his early 20s.
He was upset about Lewis’ life, he told The Associated Press in December, especially about how someone “so young” achieved a prominent position as chairman of the Student Law Coordinating Committee.
At age 33, the Democratic Democrat will assume his own leadership mantle after being one of two candidates to help the party sweep Georgia’s major Senate by-elections, a victory that seals Democrats’ control of the chamber. has. Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue in the run-off held 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 has never allowed youth and inexperienced obstacles to his pursuits.
In 2017, at the age of 29, he ran for a congress in Georgia in a race closely watched as an early referendum on President Donald Trump.
Although he lost, he smashed fundraising records and played the game in a once-reliable Republican district. For his Senate campaign, he followed a sharper approach. His platform was shamelessly liberal, calling for a minimum wage of $ 15, a “public option” health plan for the government, and a new voting right to restore federal oversight of state election laws.
He also launched a fierce attack on Perdue as he picked up on his opponent’s exaggerated claim that he was pursuing a ‘radical socialist agenda’. At a debate in October, he called the 71-year-old former CEO a crook who used the COVID-19 pandemic to protect his stock portfolio while underestimating the severity of the virus. Perdue maintained the allegations were false.
Ossoff is smart, has a ‘good heart’ and will do his best to be a good senator, said Sarah Riggs Amico, a fellow Democrat who ran for lieutenant governor in Georgia in 2018, and Ossoff challenged in Senate election.
“The reality is that the government functions better when people from a wide range of 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 addressing the coronavirus and climate change. She was not worried about his age.
“I think we need young people,” she said outside a polling station in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday. “People in the office are too old.”
Ossoff said his first race taught him how important grassroots campaigns are and to “ignore the paint according to figures, the nonsense of the garden that the GOP is throwing at me.”
“I do not care, and I really can not care less what they say,” he told the AP last month. His campaign turned down an interview request on Wednesday.
Ossoff, who grew up in an affluent family in Atlanta, was 16 when he read Lewis’s memoirs on the civil rights movement, “Walking With the Wind.” He wrote a letter to Lewis and Lewis offered him a summer job.
Lewis refers to Hank Johnson, a lawyer in Atlanta who was presented to Congress in 2006. Ossoff, a graduate of Georgetown University, became the fourth member of Johnson’s campaign staff. Lewis would continue to be a mentor.
Ossoff worked for Johnson’s staff in Washington for five years. In 2013, after Ossoff inherited money from his late grandfather, he invested in a small film production company in London. Insight TWI funds investigative documentaries and sells them to broadcasters, including the BBC. Ossoff is the CEO of the company.
In a victory speech early Wednesday, Ossoff said he would follow Lewis’ example. The Georgian Democrat passed away last year after serving more than three decades in Congress.
“This campaign was about health and work and justice for the people of the state, for all the people of the state,” he said. “And it will be my guiding principles if I serve this state in the U.S. Senate.”
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Associated Press journalist Haleluya Hadero contributed to this report.