If you are not yet familiar with him, you will be soon. After spending years as a backbench Democratic senator from Georgia, Jon Ossoff has suddenly transformed into one of the most talked-about potential candidates for president in 2028. The 39-year-old Democrat is turning heads with his rapid rise from obscurity. He is seeking re-election to the upper chamber of Congress and holds a commanding lead over Republican Mike Collins with Election Day fast approaching. And he had something of a breakout moment in recent days when he graced the cover of Newsweek. But how he reached the Senate in the first place is quite a story in itself.
Timing Is Everything
It was one day before the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, when Ossoff was elected to the Senate, making him the youngest senator in the nation at age 33, and his victory was a case study in how timing can be everything in politics as in life. After his defeat in the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s insistence that he was cheated out of re-election led him to exhort his supporters to stay home for not one but two Senate runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 that would decide control of the upper chamber. This was after Democrats had already secured control of the House in addition to the presidency. Riding a wave of anti-Trump sentiment, Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both defeated their Republican opponents, and Democrats secured the trifecta. Ossoff actually beat the same man in the runoff, David Perdue, who had beaten Ossoff by two points in the general election two months earlier, a clear demonstration of how Trump’s plummeting popularity handed the Senate seat to Ossoff. While many people obviously remember January 6, which has turned into a high holy holiday on the left, it was actually January 5, 2021, that set the stage for the Joe Biden progressive era.
Fast forward to 2026, and according to Liberty Nation News’ Public Square, the young Georgia senator has built an eight-point lead over Collins, a Trump ally who was weakened by a divisive primary fight. Despite a number of more competitive Senate races that could flip from red to blue or vice versa, capturing most of the national attention, Ossoff has somehow risen from the shadows all the way to a tie with Gavin Newsom for second place among prospective 2028 Democratic presidential candidates in the latest Polymarket odds. His 15% is topped only by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 18%. What has Ossoff done to account for his rapid rise? Why all the buzz about a guy few had heard about just a few months ago?
The Ossoff Moment
Leftists are desperately in search of someone, anyone new and fresh who can erase the stain and shame of 2024, ideally a candidate who can appeal to liberals, progressives, and – perhaps most importantly – independent voters, who now constitute some 40% of the electorate. And that potential appeal is what’s hinted at in an examination of the Georgia Democrat in the cover story in Newsweek, entitled “Could Jon Ossoff Be the Democrats’ Presidential Fix to Our Broken Politics?” and subtitled “Senator Jon Ossoff has emerged as a Democratic favorite for 2028. The only question is, does he want to run?” The piece contains many of the same themes as an article in longtime leftist platform The Atlantic, which explores what it calls “the Jon Ossoff Moment.”
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Author David A. Graham describes Ossoff as “a politician who can deliver a strong message or moment in one to two minutes,” citing Ossoff’s politically effective exchanges with Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence (about who won the 2020 presidential election), and War Secretary Pete Hegseth (about past claims of victory in the still-raging Iran war) during recent committee hearings.
Style is as much a factor as substance in the eyes of the author, who observes that Ossoff “adopted a forensic, almost monotone voice to interrogate them [Clayton and Hegseth].” He added that “Witnesses’ fumbling looks bad by comparison, and Ossoff sounds righteously angry without being rageful.”
“But unlike some other Democrats in the 2028 hunt (Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and, most glaringly, Gavin Newsom), he also doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard,” Graham avers.
Masculinity has become a prime cultural issue during this election cycle, from Ken Paxton’s attempts to paint his opponent James Talarico as a girly man to Elizabeth Warren making herself a laughingstock again by calling disgraced ex-Maine Senate nominee and accused sexual assaulter Graham Platner “my kind of man.” The author argues that Ossoff “represents a different kind of masculinity, one that owes less to Sly Stallone and more to Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: square-jawed, but bound more by principle than muscle.”
But the author may have hit on the principal reason for Ossoff’s sudden attractiveness as a potential presidential candidate in 2028: “[H]e’s a bit of a blank slate on the national stage, without a clear ideological profile or strong ties to any party faction. That makes him alluring to Democrats of all varieties, who can project onto him whatever they wish—at least for now.”
Gloves Off
In a knockdown, drag-out debate Thursday evening, Ossoff took off the gloves: “Mike Collins has brought dishonor to our state through his personal bigotry and his widely documented ties to white nationalists, and he sold out Georgia in his pathetic, childlike devotion to Donald Trump, voting for the tariffs that have sent groceries soaring, voting for the healthcare cuts that have doubled your insurance premiums and voting for the war that sent diesel to its record high.” Collins, in turn, sought to portray Ossoff as “a trust fund kid who’s never had a job in his life” while criticizing him for being weak on the border. “He wanted to keep the borders wide open so that we had fentanyl coming across this border … No one has ever asked or held Jon Ossoff accountable for any of his votes or the reasons why.” And then Collins added, “Bidenomics, that Green New Deal that my opponent voted for, that’s where all this inflation came from.”
On top of a lead well outside the margin of error and likely not much affected by the debate, Ossoff has shown tremendous fundraising prowess. He has raised $80 million, the most by any Democrat in the nation, and all without a dollar from corporate PACs or federal lobbyists. That is impressive in its own right and extraordinarily appealing to Democratic operatives already thinking ahead to 2028. No matter the breadth of his ambition, Jon Ossoff certainly appears to be a man on a mission. The only question is whether that mission is designed to settle for the Senate or ultimately reach the White House.
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