ATLANTA (AP) – Jon Ossoff, as a teenager, was inspired by the key role John Lewis played in the fight for racial equality when the civil rights icon was in his 20s.
He told The Associated Press in December that he admired Lewis’s life, especially how someone “so young” had achieved such a prominent position as chairman of the Student Nonviolence Steering Committee.
At 33, the millennial Democrat will assume his own mantle of leadership after being one of two candidates to help the party sweep the decisive U.S. Senate second election in Georgia, a victory that sealed control of the U.S. chamber for Democrats. Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue in the second round held Tuesday after neither he nor Perdue received 50 percent of the vote in November.
This is Ossoff’s first election to public office and he will be the youngest member of the Senate. But he has never let youth and inexperience be barriers to his aspirations.
In 2017, at the age of 29, he ran in Congress in Georgia in a closely watched race as an early referendum on President Donald Trump.
Although he lost, he broke fundraising records and made the contest in a once-reliable Republican district competitive. For his campaign in the Senate, he took a sharper approach. His platform was liberally brazen, demanding a $ 15 minimum wage, a government health plan with a “public option,” and a new voting rights law to restore federal oversight of state election laws.
He also launched a fierce attack on Perdue while disregarding his opponent’s exaggerated claim that he was pursuing a “radical socialist agenda.” In a debate in October, he labeled the 71-year-old corporate executive as a “scam” who used the COVID-19 pandemic to protect his securities portfolio while minimizing the severity of the virus. Perdue insisted the allegations were false.
Ossoff is smart, has a “good heart” and will be dedicated to being a good senator, said Sarah Riggs Amico, a fellow Democrat who ran for lieutenant governor in Georgia in 2018 and challenged Ossoff in the Senate primaries .
“The reality is that government works best when there are people from a wide variety of backgrounds who come to the table,” he said.
Voter Kaitlynn Poborsky, 28, said she chose Ossoff because she was looking for change and a passionate senator to tackle coronavirus and climate change. He had no worries about his age.
“I think we need young people,” he said Tuesday in front of a polling station in downtown Atlanta. “The people in charge are too old.”
Ossoff said his first career taught him the importance of doing grassroots campaigns and ignoring “the painting by numbers, nonsense of garden varieties that the Republican Party throws at me.”
“I don’t pay any attention to it and I really wouldn’t mind less what they say,” he told the AP last month. His campaign rejected an interview request on Wednesday.
Raised in a wealthy Atlanta family, Ossoff was 16 when he read Lewis’s memoirs on the civil rights movement, “Walking With the Wind.” He wrote a letter to Lewis and offered him a summer job.
Lewis referred him to Hank Johnson, an Atlanta area attorney who appeared in Congress in 2006. Ossoff, a graduate of Georgetown University, became the fourth member of Johnson’s campaign staff. Lewis would continue to be a mentor.
Ossoff worked for five years on Johnson’s staff in Washington. In 2013, after Ossoff inherited money from his late grandfather, he invested in a small London-based film producer. Insight TWI funds research documentaries and sells them to broadcasters, including the BBC. Ossoff is the CEO of the company.
In a victory speech early Wednesday, Ossoff said he would follow Lewis’ example. The Georgia Democrat died last year after serving in Congress for more than three decades.
“This campaign has been about health, jobs and justice for the people of the state, for all the people of the state,” he said. “And they will be my guiding principles while serving this state in the United States Senate.”
___
Associated Press journalist Haleluya Hadero contributed to this report.