New reporting labels Jon Ossoff an “accidental senator” and reveals he’s added former Barack Obama speechwriters to his campaign payroll, fueling speculation that his Georgia re-election operation looks “more reminiscent of a presidential campaign than a Southern Senate race.”
“Jon Ossoff is using his Senate campaign to stage a carefully calculated national reinvention, spending Georgia donor dollars on Obama speechwriters while treating the state he represents as an afterthought,” said NRSC National Press Secretary Bernadette Breslin.
Ossoff is increasingly using his Georgia re-election bid as a test run for 2028:
“[A]s his national profile has grown, Ossoff has drawn inevitable comparisons to Obama, another first-term senator whose presidential prospects became a topic almost immediately. Ossoff has mastered an effective kind of on-the-spot speechifying—a teleprompter-like cadence that is often compared to Obama’s upscale vocal style. He even hired Fenway Strategies, the speechwriting firm founded by Obama alumni. He also seems to have hit the gym and bought better-fitting suits. (Thank god…) On the campaign trail, his videos are shot from low angles and edited with polish, making Ossoff appear towering, more reminiscent of a presidential campaign than a Southern Senate race.”
Even Democratic political operatives have warned that Ossoff’s blind national ambition could taint his reputation in Georgia:
“[O]bama’s aides understood the danger of appearing too ambitious. . . . “We didn’t want people to think, Oh, here comes this arrogant kid who thinks he knows more than we do,” a former senior Obama aide told me.”
Ossoff’s national reinvention has come at the expense of moral clarity:
“As the war in Gaza progressed, Ossoff broke with many in his party, eventually supporting two of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s amendments to cut off specific military aid to Israel, including tank and mortar rounds. He later voted for an amendment to cut off the sale of 1,000 pound-bombs to Israel.”
Previous reporting exposed Ossoff for directing the overwhelming majority of his campaign’s ad spending outside Georgia.
To date, Ossoff has invested millions in TV, digital, and streaming across early-voting states and key swing states. His nationalized campaign strategy appears unique among Democratic Senate candidates, with Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown all “keeping ad targeting close to home.”
Read more here.