How Jon Ossoff Won Re-Election and Became the Midterms’ Main Character in the Process

Democrat Jon Ossoff is about to win re-election in the Senate, with CNN projecting he will take down his opponent, the MAGA-friendly U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, by a wide margin.

While the more compelling Senate contest for many political observers have been the toss-ups in Maine, Michigan and Texas, the seemingly safe Georgia race became a fascination from inside the Beltway to the mansions of Brentwood as the midterms played out. This race had a little something for everyone.

Until recently, Ossoff was known for his 2020 runoff defeat of incumbent Republican David Perdue — a true nail-biter that grabbed global attention because his win, which was announced amid the January 6 Capitol Hill riots, meant Democrats would enter Joe Biden’s term with control of the Senate. Ossoff then laid low as a young Senate moderate who brokered some ho-hum bipartisan deals on drug prices until, in February, after an exhausting year of MAGA 2.0, the 39-year-old senator delivered a stump speech at the Georgia International Convention Center in which he characterized Trump as a “failed lame duck” who is deeply unpopular in Georgia and dubbed his administration the “Epstein class.” The speech spread widely online and brought in a wave of donations and, soon, attention from Hollywood’s elite. Now he’s one of the hottest Democrats in the country, and his declared lack of presidential ambitions hasn’t stopped chatter around a potential Ossoff 2028 bid.

How he got here is a story worth its own script treatment.

Ossoff was unopposed in the Democratic primary and spent the time sharpening his attacks on the Trump administration, hammering the president on inflation, foreign relations in the Middle East, immigration enforcement and the FBI raid that seized 2020 election documents in Fulton County. In the closing days of his reelection campaign, he questioned the objectives of the U.S. war in Iran and the administration’s official claims of military success. He cited record-high diesel prices and criticized tariffs and health care cuts. His pitch was summed up Monday at a speech in Decatur.

“We need change,” Ossoff told the crowd gathered for a final door-knocking push. “They have lied us into yet another war in the Middle East. They slashed Medicaid and doubled health insurance premiums to cut taxes for the rich. These tariffs have sent grocery prices soaring. They’re crushing Georgia’s small businesses and Georgia farms, but these next 26 hours are the time remaining for us to wield the power and the rights invested in us as citizens by our Constitution to make a difference.”

That criticism is decaf compared with what he saved for Trump himself. The first Millennial senator laid into the president in ways many would not have, alleging he preferred traveling with aide Natalie Harp and building an $800 million White House ballroom over fulfilling his presidential duties. He went on to accuse him of sleeping through meetings, golfing and trading stocks. Asked about Ossoff by the press, Trump offered a jab at his appearance, calling him a “Pee-wee Herman lookalike” and later mocking his $900 makeup session. The spat began in the context of Trump’s approval rating dipping below the 40 percent threshold and Ossoff’s polls moving up and to the right.

As the internet’s eyes turned to Ossoff over these campaign moments, Hollywood’s naturally followed, and the incumbent senator was enjoying the spoils of fundraising events held by television heavyweights Shonda Rhimes and Chuck Lorre, with maxed-out donations from Larry David, Sally Field and David Geffen, among other A-listers. The right has cried foul over these Hollywood connections in ways that seem to have fallen on deaf ears among Georgians concerned with kitchen-table issues and not whom the biz’s boomers are backing. Ossoff’s presidential ambitions are naturally questioned in this context, and as one politico reportedly told Page Six, if he bests his GOP rival today by 6 points, he’ll be all but shoved into a race against other potential 2028 Democratic favorites, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The polls ahead of the vote had shown Ossoff with a commanding lead well over that 6-point mark; in fact, the final average had him +10 over Collins, whose backstory is an entirely different tale that involved a split in Georgia’s GOP. It began with a last-minute endorsement from Trump ahead of the primary runoff, which Collins earned over loyalty to the MAGA movement; i.e., he echoes, to this day, Trump’s big lie about his election defeat to Joe Biden in 2020. Collins’ runoff rival, Derek Dooley, has refuted these claims, which makes sense because he’s a childhood pal of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp; the GOP initially wanted Kemp, who is exiting the governor’s office, to run against Ossoff, despite his clashes with Trump over election fraud. Dooley stood in as a surrogate but lost the runoff to the congressman and Trump loyalist.

With Collins out of the picture, Ossoff is now firmly in main-character position. Given that magnetic stump speech and the run he’s had since February, all eyes will on the senior senator from Georgia in the coming days, and certainly not for the last time.