What Suddenly Made Jon Ossoff Into Such a Democratic Rock Star?

A few electrifying speeches. A willingness to talk about corruption. An artful straddling of the center-left divide. And suddenly he’s high on the 2028 lists.

A year ago, Senator Jon Ossoff seemed like he might be a one-hit wonder—elected in that short period from November 2020 to January 2021 when Georgia turned blue, then defeated in his reelection bid and quickly forgotten. Or if he won reelection, always outshined by his home state colleague, the eloquent Raphael Warnock, who still leads the Atlanta church that Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. once helmed.

But over the last year, Ossoff has become a Democratic star. His strong fundraising and poll numbers have made the 39-year-old the clear favorite in his reelection bid this fall, delighting Democrats who worried the party’s 2022 and 2024 struggles in Georgia suggested that the state had gone back to being red. Ossoff’s campaign ads and lines from his speeches are going viral and being borrowed by others in the party, most notably his February denunciation of what he called the “Epstein class.”

And while California Representative Ro Khanna, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, and many other ambitious Democrats are flying to fundraisers across the country and appearing on whatever podcasts they can to drum up interest in their presidential bids, there is considerable buzz about a 2028 Ossoff candidacy—even though the Georgian has done nothing to stoke it. “The moment he wins in November he becomes a front runner for 2028,” journalist Mehdi Hasan tweeted a few months ago, along with a clip of one of Ossoff’s speeches.

Ossoff recently had to publicly declare that he was not considering a presidential run, as such speculation was becoming so loud that it might have hurt his Senate campaign.

How did Ossoff go in less than a decade from baby-faced documentary filmmaker who couldn’t get elected to the House to dream presidential candidate for some Democratic insiders? A combination of luck, skill, and circumstance.

Ossoff’s political career didn’t look promising when it started nine years ago. He ran in a special election for a U.S. House seat in the Atlanta suburbs in early 2017. It was the first campaign for Ossoff, who had worked as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill before leading a film company called Insight. The 30-year-old candidate vastly out-raised most of his rivals and picked up endorsements from Stacey Abrams, the late John Lewis, and other prominent figures in Georgia Democratic politics. But after qualifying for a runoff, he was narrowly defeated by Republican Karen Handel. Some Democrats felt Ossoff had lost a winnable race because he didn’t have a clear message or strong platform. His defeat looked even worse after another Democrat, Lucy McBath, beat Handel in that same district in November 2018.

Ossoff didn’t give up, though. That House race drew national attention, because it was one of the first elections after Donald Trump’s surprising 2016 victory. So Ossoff had cultivated a national fundraising base. He used that to run for U.S. Senate in 2020 and win a competitive Democratic primary. He and Warnock then effectively campaigned together to defeat two incumbent Republicans in the January 2021 runoff that delivered a U.S. Senate........

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