Sleeves rolled up, standing tall in the middle of the Georgia Theatre in downtown Athens, Georgia, last Sunday, Jon Ossoff delivered a brutal political message about Donald Trump, his family and his allies.
They “made you pay more for everything” and “lied us into war”, said the 39-year-old senator running for a second term to represent the southern US battleground state.
“All while the crook president and his crook family raked in billions from all over the world.”
As Democrats attempt to wrench control of the US Senate from Republicans in November’s midterm elections, Ossoff has emerged with a message his party hopes will carry them to victory this year and even set a model for the 2028 election.
Derided by Trump as “Pee-wee Herman”, the eccentric 1980s comedian who also sported short dark hair, Ossoff has placed the administration’s alleged grift and conflicts of interest at the heart of his campaign, tying them to the cost of living crisis, the war in Iran and the spread of AI, all political weaknesses for Trump and congressional Republicans.
“Democrats need to run on corruption the way Ossoff is. He talks about corruption as a function of the cost of living,” said Paul Begala, the veteran Democratic strategist. He compared Ossoff’s message with the 1982 country song “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)”.
At the same time, Ossoff, the first Jewish senator from Georgia, has appeared to overcome the divisions between the socialist left and moderate Democrats that have torn the party apart elsewhere.
A former documentary film-maker known for taking great care with his words, Ossoff has delivered his message through well-choreographed viral moments from rallies that have attracted national attention.
In April, he attacked Trump as the “faithless president” who “depicts himself as Christ”. In May, he blasted the president for “building a monument to himself”.
A furore erupted last month when Ossoff made a passing, if deliberate, reference to Trump’s loyal aide Natalie Harp, saying the president would rather “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie” than govern, eliciting a vitriolic backlash from the White House.
In Athens, Ossoff blasted what he called the “Mar-a-Lago mafia” and warned that Trump “dismantles precautions and calls us fools for worrying” about AI regulation because of his inner circle’s ties to Big Tech.
While Ossoff was considered one of the most vulnerable sitting Democrats heading into the 2026 midterms, he now leads his Trump-backed Republican rival Mike Collins by just under 8 percentage points. If he wins with a solid margin in a crucial swing state, which Trump won in 2016 and 2024 but lost in 2020, Ossoff would be positioned for a presidential run in 2028.
“His desire isn’t just to win this election, it’s to win it in such a blowout that he could change his mind in 2028 or after,” said one senior Georgia Democrat.
On the campaign trail, Ossoff has denied any plans for a presidential run.
As Ossoff’s political profile has risen, with echoes of Barack Obama’s youth and oratory skills, Republicans have portrayed him as feeble, effeminate and beholden to the far left.
“He’s a man too weak and too vain to stand up for what’s right,” Collins said at the Republican midterms convention in Dallas, Texas, earlier this month.
An anti-Ossoff ad released by a spending group backing Senate Republicans attacked Ossoff for being a “pretty boy” who spends lavishly on “hair and make-up . . . even more than the ladies”. After Ossoff’s comments about Trump and Harp, White House communications director Steven Cheung took to X to label the Georgia senator “Jon Jackoff” and “the biggest cuck loser”.
This week, Brian Kemp, Georgia’s two-term governor who backed a different candidate in the Republican Senate primary this year, belatedly endorsed Collins and will be fundraising for him later this month, which could help boost support for Ossoff’s rival.
After the Athens rally, outside the theatre, Vin Rainwater, a 42-year-old man who works in the construction business who had just listened to Ossoff, was sceptical of his appeal.
“I don’t think adhering to anti-Trump rhetoric is going to serve us moving forward, Trump’s going to be gone in a couple of years,” he said. “Low common denominator ‘booting Trump around’ stuff — it’s cool but it doesn’t do anything for us.”
But others were far more enthusiastic. “He seems to have integrity,” said Isabel Reuter, a 29-year-old woman who works at the University of Georgia. “He’s the best chance we have at moving back up out of the trenches,” she added.
“Jon probably needs to get some more experience . . .[but] his message is pointing out all the contradictions that the Republican Party and Trump have put forward,” says Pamela Luiz, a 73-year-old retired nurse who attended the rally.
Sirak Yilma, 23, a law school student from Roswell, in the Atlanta suburbs, who had volunteered in phone banks for Ossoff in high school, said the Democrat had a “very similar ideology [to me] he’s not too far left, he’s not too far to the centre . . . I like what he stands for”.
“He has had a lot of viral moments, [but] I don’t think he’s doing it just for attention purposes,” Yilma added.
As for a possible 2028 run, Begala said Ossoff’s statements denying any interest should be taken with a grain of salt, and that for now the senator seemed to have struck the right chord for the party.
“I’m old enough to remember Bill Clinton promising in 1990 he wasn’t going to run in 1992 and Barack Obama promising in 2006 he wasn’t going to run in 2008,” said Begala.
