Senator Jon Ossoff (Democrat-Georgia) speaks with supporters at the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum in Savannah, Georgia, in February. Photo / Sam Wolfe, for The Washington Post
Representative Buddy Carter warned a crowd of Republicans in Roberta, Georgia, in January that he faced an uphill battle in November to unseat Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff in the purple state, if he becomes the Republican nominee.
“Look, this guy’s no slouch,” the Georgia congressman said, according to a recording of the remarks obtained by the Washington Post.
“He’s pretty sharp, he’s articulate, he’s young, he’s handsome, he talks well. You better have somebody who can go toe to toe with him.”
Publicly, Republicans in the state and in Washington continue to list Georgia as their top pick-up opportunity in the Senate as they defend their 53-seat majority in a United States Midterm year in which their party faces fierce political headwinds.
US President Donald Trump won the state by a more than 2% margin in 2024, and Republicans have painted Ossoff as too liberal for Georgia.
But behind closed doors, Republicans have tamped down their hopes of unseating the 39-year-old powerhouse fundraiser as he seeks another term.
They’re lamenting their bitterly divided primary field made worse by a recruiting failure when popular Republican Governor Brian Kemp declined to run for the seat.
Carter, Representative Mike Collins and Derek Dooley, a former college football coach endorsed by Kemp, are the main competitors in the May 19 GOP primary.
Collins - a close Trump ally with a blisteringly MAGA social media presence that could alienate moderate voters - leads in most polls of the Republican primary. The Cook Political Report rates the general election as a toss-up.
“I’m not feeling bullish about it,” said one Republican strategist who was granted anonymity to provide a more candid assessment. “[Ossoff] has wisely avoided the temptation of going on cable news for six years and playing to the base for social media likes ... I think he’s going to reap the benefits of that.”
Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican retiring from his North Carolina seat this year, said Ossoff has done “a good job presenting as a moderate candidate”. Tillis does not believe he actually is moderate.
Republicans risked ceding crucial independent and moderate Republican voters to Ossoff if they nominate a more hard-right candidate, Tillis said.
“If these people want a purity test and they put somebody forth that’s the darling of the MAGA base but doesn’t resonate with unaffiliated [voters] and right of centre fiscal Republicans, that’s a recipe for losing,” said Tillis, whose neighbouring state shares similar political characteristics to Georgia.
The skinny former House staffer who won his Senate seat in a runoff election in 2021 did not always inspire the same fear from his opponents.
Republicans believed Ossoff, then a political neophyte, had ridden on the coattails of Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia), a charismatic preacher he shared the ticket with, and also benefitted from an odd election season in which Trump depressed Republican turnout by falsely claiming widespread voter fraud.
Just a couple of years earlier, Ossoff had lost a House special election that took place shortly after Trump was first sworn in, disappointing Democrats across the country.
“The first time I ever saw him was when he was running in that Georgia 6 special election and I was like, ‘Oh God, just what we need: Another former staffer,’” recalled Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist. “But he has got game.”
When he got to Washington, Ossoff built a Senate office that prioritised responsiveness to constituents and a hyper focus on local Georgia issues.
Inspired by the late Republican senator Johnny Isakson, Ossoff said he wanted his office to provide excellent constituent services to any Georgian, regardless of their political affiliation.
In 2025, he joined the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, allowing him to steer more money to projects back home.
“I don’t crave attention. I’m not doing this for the spotlight,” Ossoff said in a brief interview in the Capitol. “I want to do a great job for the state.”
Attention is exactly what the senator has been getting, however, as he’s broken from his hyper-local focus in recent months to deliver stinging attacks on Trump and his Administration that have won him admiration from national Democrats.
A speech he gave in suburban Atlanta excoriating Trump for empowering a wealthy “Epstein class” to rule the country while slashing public services went viral.
And in recent remarks at a black church, Ossoff lashed out at the Trump Administration’s actions as evil, criticising Republicans from a biblical perspective.
“There’s a wickedness to the programme,” he said earlier this year.
“I don’t know, pastor, where it is in scripture that it says deny care to the sick, take from those with the least to give to those with the most, violate the house of worship to hunt down the refugee. Where in the scripture are those lessons taught?”
The rhetoric is not the standard, careful stump speeches many vulnerable lawmakers up for re-election in purple or red states stick to so as to avoid missteps or alienating middle-of-the-road voters.
And it could add another element of risk to his strategy of winning over moderate voters in the state.
It’s also sparked speculation that he has an eye on a future presidential run that may be taking precedence over his re-election bid.
But Ossoff’s fans believe his fiery approach makes him seem more authentic to voters in Georgia, who wouldn’t buy an election-year makeover from the senator.
“One of the biggest mistakes that vulnerable members make is that in an election year they all of a sudden start tacking to the middle, and that’s just transparently obvious to all the voters,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a longtime former aide to President Barack Obama who now co-hosts the Pod Save America podcast popular among liberals. “He’s standing strong.”
Pfeiffer called Ossoff “one of the best communicators in the Democratic Party”.
At a recent event Ossoff held in Savannah, several fans in the audience said they hoped Ossoff would consider a presidential run in the future.
“In his recent speeches, he’s sounded very presidential,” noted Ray Mosley, a Bulloch County commissioner.
But Ossoff brushed off that speculation as a “curse” and said he is remaining focused on what he believes will be a bruising race in the state.
“The Republican field is a mess, but I’m running every day like I’m behind and I expect this to be an extremely close and competitive race,” he said.
Republicans are planning to pour millions into the race and have already attacked him in ads on illegal immigration and for “chaos” at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, blaming the long security lines on his votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security.
They believe Ossoff has not broken enough from Democrats on key votes to adequately distance himself from the party in a purple state that voted for Trump just over a year ago.
Ossoff broke with Democrats to support the Laken Riley Act on final passage, which expanded detention for immigrants accused of some crimes. The bill is named after a college student in Georgia who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant. But he usually votes with his party.
“His record is Joe Biden’s record,” said Representative Brian Jack (R-Georgia), who added Georgians found Biden toxic. “I’m not sure what legislation he could advocate for that wasn’t a Biden priority.”
Ossoff is known to be extremely deliberative about votes - to the point of hand-wringing - and discusses legislation extensively with colleagues before making a decision.
“He’s incredibly methodical, but also thoughtful about the impact that the policies we pass or don’t pass have on the people he represents,” said Senator Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), another swing-state politician who campaigned with Ossoff in Georgia earlier this year.
Shortly after Trump’s election in 2024, Ossoff voted for a Senator Bernie Sanders-backed resolution to block some arms transfers to Israel as the war in Gaza had devolved into a humanitarian crisis.
Just 19 members of the Democratic caucus backed the resolution, and Ossoff faced a fierce backlash back home for his vote.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the leader of the liberal Jewish group J Street, said he spoke with Ossoff ahead of the vote, and that the senator was under intense pressure to vote against the resolution.
“He knew what he was getting himself into and he took a principled stand,” Ben-Ami said of the Jewish senator.
Now, Ben-Ami said, as public opinion has turned against Israel’s actions in the war, “time has proven him right and the wind has shifted”.
Republicans in Georgia hope that the MAGA base will show up for whichever Republican emerges from their primary . “We won the state of Georgia for President Trump, proving that it is indeed a red state,” Representative Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia) said. “We just need to do the same thing for whoever our Senate candidate is going to be.”
Ossoff and his allies say he has the support of a coalition that extends beyond the Democratic base, however. Trump’s approval rating was only 43% in Georgia in a 2025 Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll.
“In order to win in Georgia, you need a coalition,” Warnock said.
“The Democratic faithful, the base and reasonable people in the middle who want to see us focus not so much on the politics and more on the everyday concerns of ordinary people. That’s what Jon Ossoff is doing.”
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