Last week, reporting revealed that Jon Ossoff knowingly took credit for legislation he couldn’t pass alone. Now, Democratic strategists tell Axios that Ossoff also “rode Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s coattails” to survive elections he couldn’t win on his own.
“Jon Ossoff is an empty suit who continues to cut corners on the campaign trail and in Congress—and now even Democrats are calling him out for it,” said NRSC National Press Secretary Bernadette Breslin.
Axios also scrutinizes Ossoff’s carefully controlled media presence, pointing to his staged interviews in “predictable environments.”
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Ossoff got where he is by riding Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s coattails.
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- [S]ome Democratic strategists argue that Warnock pulled Ossoff across the finish line when they ran in the 2021 runoff election. Warnock, a senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, outperformed Ossoff in the runoff — then held on to his seat in 2022 despite political headwinds during the Biden administration.
“Ossoff didn’t get here alone,” Rich McDaniel, a Georgia-based Democratic strategist and an architect of former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones’ 2017 victory, told Axios.
- “Many would argue it was Warnock who carried him in 2020, not the other way around, and that’s the ghost that will always follow him,” McDaniel added. “What should worry Georgia Democrats more is the pattern underneath it: Black voters build the coattails every cycle, then get left behind when it’s time to hire the strategists and control the resources. Ossoff has a chance to break that cycle instead of repeat it.”
- Warnock is widely seen as another potential 2028 presidential candidate, and he’s taken more steps toward a run than Ossoff — writing a book and campaigning in Nevada, an expected early primary state in 2028.