Who is Jon Ossoff? Georgia Senator rallies in midtown Atlanta as senate race heats up ahead of state's midterms

Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff held a rally in Midtown Atlanta on Sunday (August 16), firing up the crowd with more than 1,000 supporters. The campaign trail of the US Senate race is heating up in the town as the election is less than three months away. "The country's counting on us, Atlanta," Ossoff said.

Ossoff said his goal is to fix what he views as a political system, stressing that corporate money must be removed from politics. He urged that spectacular wealth is buying an increasingly larger share of influence over our national affairs, and this corruption explains why the system isn't working for ordinary Americans.

He also criticised the war in Iran, rising healthcare costs, and what he called the president's failure to bring down the cost of everyday goods, directing his attacks at both President Trump and his Republican opponent, Congressman Mike Collins.

Who is Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff?

Thomas Jonathan Ossoff was born on February 16, 1987, in Atlanta, Georgia, and has served as the senior United States senator from Georgia since 2021. He was raised in Northlake, an unincorporated community northeast of Atlanta. In 2021, he became the youngest incumbent US senator, a member of the Democratic Party and also the youngest Senior Senator of the United States.

Before coming into politics, Ossoff served as a national security staffer and legislative assistant to US Representative Hank Johnson, and later became managing director of a documentary production company focused on investigative journalism. His first congressional bid came in a 2017 special election, where he came close to winning a seat in a district that had traditionally leaned strongly Republican.

He went on to win his first Senate election in 2021, unseating Republican incumbent David Perdue in a runoff held the same day Raphael Warnock also won his race — a result that gave Democrats a 50-50 Senate majority, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. Ossoff holds several distinctions: he's the youngest senator elected since 1980, the first born in the 1980s, and the first Millennial to serve in the Senate. He and Warnock are also the only two Democrats to hold a Georgia Senate seat since Zell Miller's departure in 2005.

Early life and career

Jon Ossoff grew up in Northlake, an unincorporated area near Atlanta. His mother, Heather Fenton, emigrated from Sydney, Australia at age 23 and later co-founded a PAC supporting women running for local office in Georgia. His father, Richard Ossoff, has Russian and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, runs a specialist publishing company, and was involved in 1980s activism against a planned Atlanta parkway. Though his mother isn't Jewish, Ossoff formally converted before his bar mitzvah, and he has spoken about growing up around relatives who survived the Holocaust.

He attended Atlanta's Paideia School, interning in high school for civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis. He graduated from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 2009 and earned a master's in international political economy from the London School of Economics in 2013. On Lewis's recommendation, Ossoff worked as a national security and foreign policy aide for Representative Hank Johnson from 2007–2012. From 2013–2021, he led a London-based documentary production company investigating corruption abroad, partly funded by an inheritance from his grandfather.

Ossoff first ran for Congress in a 2017 special election after Tom Price vacated Georgia's 6th District to join Trump's cabinet. Despite the seat's strong Republican lean, Ossoff, backed by Johnson, Lewis, Stacey Abrams, and Bernie Sanders, turned the race into a national contest over Trump and healthcare, raising record-breaking sums. He led the initial primary but fell short of a majority, then narrowly lost the runoff to Karen Handel by roughly 9,300 votes, in what became the most expensive House race in U.S. history at the time.

In 2020, Ossoff challenged incumbent Senator David Perdue, becoming the best-funded Senate candidate ever after raising over $100 million. A Perdue campaign ad that digitally distorted Ossoff's nose drew accusations of antisemitism and was pulled. Neither candidate won a majority in November, forcing a January 2021 runoff, which Ossoff won by about 55,000 votes, running especially strong in suburban Atlanta counties. He was sworn in on January 20, 2021, alongside fellow winner Raphael Warnock, a result that gave Democrats a 50-50 Senate majority via Vice President Harris's tie-breaking vote.

Ossoff made history as Georgia's first Jewish senator, the first Jewish senator from the Deep South since 1974, and the youngest and first Millennial senator elected. He and Warnock became Georgia's first Democratic senators since Zell Miller left office in 2005.