Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, the youngest member of the Senate and a rising star in the Democratic Party, is running unopposed in his party’s primary on Tuesday. His general-election race is one of several at the center of the battle for the Senate majority.
Here are five things to know about Mr. Ossoff, 39, of Atlanta.
1. He unseated an incumbent Republican in 2021. Mr. Ossoff defeated Senator David Perdue, a one-term Republican, in a runoff that year. The victory, which came by about a percentage point, helped Democratswin the Senate . It came as the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, defeated Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, giving Democrats both Senate seats in Georgia and propelling the party into the Senate majority.
2. He was the youngest politician to reach the Senate in decades. Mr. Ossoff was 33 when he was elected in 2021. His first run for office had been a losing but competitive campaign for the House in 2017 that drew national attention (He initially ran the congressional campaign out of his basement). He was the youngest person elected to the Senate since Don Nickles, an Oklahoma Republican, won his first term in 1980, at age 31. And Mr. Ossoff was the youngest Democrat to achieve the feat since Joseph R. Biden Jr. won his first term in the Senate in 1972. Mr. Biden was 29.
3. He was once a volunteer for John Lewis’s congressional office. Mr. Ossoff, then 16, wrote a letter to Mr. Lewis that impressed the Georgia congressman and civil rights leader. It led to a spot in Mr. Lewis’s office. “You remind me of another time in my own life,” Mr. Lewis told Mr. Ossoff in a video posted by Mr. Ossoff’s campaign in 2020, shortly before Mr. Lewis died at 80. “When I was 17 years old growing up in rural Alabama, I wrote a letter to Dr. King, and he wrote me back and sent me a round-trip Greyhound bus ticket and invited me to come to Montgomery and meet with him. And it changed my life.”
4. He is seen by Republicans as an especially formidable opponent. Mr. Ossoff’s constituent services have won praise from Georgians across the political spectrum, and there is broad agreement among Republicans that they face an uphill battle in unseating him in November. Much of the debate in the three-way Republican Senate primary on Tuesday has revolved around the question of who would be best positioned to beat Mr. Ossoff, who is also a strong fund-raiser. Public opinion polls suggest that he would start the general election race leading any of the Republicans.
5. He has been floated as a possible presidential candidate. Mr. Ossoff’s popularity and skills as an orator have helped push him onto lists of potential Democratic candidates for 2028. He has dismissed the chatter. “I have zero interest in running for president in 2028,” Mr. Ossoff told MS Now in April. “I love serving the state of Georgia. I’ve got two young daughters. And to be honest with you, I think that the 2028 fantasy football risks distracting us from the urgent tasks at hand.”
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