The Untold Truth Of Jon Ossoff

During the 2020 elections, one Georgia politician became a household name overnight when his victory ended up deciding the fate of the Senate. That politician was Jon Osoff, and is made quite clear in a piece from The Sun, his drive runs in the family: both of Ossoff's parents are high-achievers.

His father, Richard Ossoff, is the owner of Strafford Publications, which The New Yorker describes as a "specialist publishing company." His mother, Heather Fenton, helped found NewPowerPAC, a political action committee that, according to the website, "directly addresses the absence of women in Georgia politics." In 2020, Jon paid tribute to his mom in a Facebook post for International Women's Day, revealing that Fenton was "the first in her family to graduate college" as well as an immigrant. "She became a U.S. citizen, a successful entrepreneur, & an accomplished advocate for the advancement of American women," he continued, posting a sweet photo of himself with his mother.

And Jon Ossoff has spoken about how his mother's work inspired him, noting on Twitter that Fenton "immigrated to America at 23 because she believed in this country." He also explained that she "became an activist because she saw the necessity of change" and "became a citizen to participate fully in our democracy." Finally, he told followers that they should vote for her sake. "Don't break my mother's heart," the politician urged his supporters.

Keep reading to discover how the ambitious young Jon Ossoff found his way into politics — and why the nation started to pay attention.

Jon Ossoff has been open about how his Jewish identity inspired him to get involved in politics.

"I'm descended from Ashkenazi immigrants who fled pogroms in the early 20th century, and I grew up among relatives who were Holocaust survivors," he shared in an interview with Haaretz, explaining that his upbringing led him to "be vigilant where there's the risk that authoritarianism may emerge." Ossoff went on to argue that Donald Trump's election had sparked an increase in extreme right-wing violence, observing that "ethno-nationalism had been a threat to Jewish people throughout the world and our history, and a threat to minorities in American society."

And in a letter to the Atlanta Jewish Times, the politician addressed Jewish voters in Georgia and spoke about his background. "I was raised among relatives who survived the Shoah," Ossoff said, noting that his own childhood as well as his family's history have "instilled in me a conviction to fight for the marginalized, the persecuted, and the dispossessed."

The late John Lewis was an inspiration to millions and Jon Ossoff was no exception. As The New Yorker noted, Ossoff worked as an intern for Lewis while he was still in high school and the activist was "a mentor" to him.

After he won the Georgia runoff election, the Democrat took a second to pay tribute to Lewis on Twitter, writing that he was "one of the most important people" in his life. Thinking back on their conversations, Ossoff noted that his win was only possible because activists like Lewis had spent years advocating for voting rights in Georgia. "I know Congressman Lewis is looking down on us today beaming with optimism."

Speaking with Haaretz, he pointed out that his fellow Georgia Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock also shared a connection with the civil rights legend, since Warnock had been his pastor at Ebenezer Baptist. As Ossoff recalled, his first conversation with Lewis was about "how he had marched alongside rabbis and Jewish activists for civil rights in the South in the mid-1960s." The political great "stressed how important it was to sustain this alliance," and Ossoff concluded that his and Senator Warnock's work "is a continuation of this tradition."

While he was still a college student at Georgetown University, Jon Ossoff started splitting his time between studying and working for local politician Hank Johnson. As noted in The New York Times, a member of John Lewis's staff helped make the introduction in 2006. "He came to me asking if I could connect him," Michaeleen Crowell recalled. "I knew the folks who were running Hank's campaign. So I said: 'I know this young kid. He's a go-getter.'"

Although there was confusion over Ossoff's early years as a staffer in Congress, after he told reporters in a campaign appearance that he had "five years of experience as a national security staffer," Johnson's team confirmed to Politifact that the college student did actually help out with national security. "Putting just any college student in that situation would be malpractice, but honestly, Jon was not a typical college student," the congressman's former chief of staff insisted.

During his time there, Ossoff was even responsible for proposing and writing a House resolution advocating for peace talks in northern Uganda, which was sponsored by Johnson. "He was concerned about children being manipulated and used in an atrocious way," Johnson told The New York Times. "I knew nothing about the conflict before he brought it to my attention, and once he did, I thought it was a great idea."

Although he's unusually young for a senator, Jon Ossoff hasn't spent his whole career as a politician. He also made time to produce documentaries for a company called Insight TWI, as Ossoff told WABE, which "specializes in investigations of organized crime, political corruption, and war crimes." The Democrat was credited on films like "Stacey on the Frontline: Girls, Guns and ISIS," which depicted the lives of a group of women fighting ISIS. 

In July 2021, he officially stepped down from his role at Insight, as Variety reported. "The thing I'm really happy about is that when I took over the company, part of what I set out to do was move towards bigger productions, bring in more clients, add ambition and increase diversity of the company's client base," the Georgia politician reflected, before observing that his "years of effort really bore fruit."

"Just before I left to enter the Senate, we took the company to even greater heights with our BBC Three productions in Iraq, the BBC One series on child abuse in football, and a successful conclusion to 'Sing, Freetown,'" he told Variety, referring to a documentary about Sierra Leone and its depiction in the media. Ossoff described these films as "significant projects that have been in development for a long time and told vital stories."

Like many politicians, Jon Ossoff became a target for Donald Trump on Twitter during the run-up to the 2017 Georgia special election. "The super Liberal Democrat in the Georgia Congressioal [sic] race tomorrow wants to protect criminals, allow illegal immigration and raise taxes!" Trump tweeted (via NBCNews), criticizing Ossoff's policies and giving a boost to local Republican candidates.

"While I'm glad the President is interested in the race, he is misinformed," Ossoff responded in a statement (via NBCNews), arguing that he was "focused on bringing fresh leadership, accountability, and bipartisan problem solving to Washington to cut wasteful spending and grow metro Atlanta's economy into the Silicon Valley of the South." The race for Georgia's 6th Congressional District had begun after the previous Representative, Tom Price, had left the role in order to join Trump as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Some had speculated that the young Democrat stood a chance, since the Republican vote would be split by multiple candidates.

In the end, Ossoff's efforts weren't enough to win on April 16, as Politico reported. Republican candidate Karen Handel defeated him by receiving 52.7% of the vote, compared to his 47.3%. But that wasn't the end of Ossoff's quest to turn Georgia blue.

As one of the younger politicians in the public eye, Jon Ossoff's success has been helped by his massive audience on social media. The senator has over 500,000 followers on his official TikTok account, where he duets with supporters to directly interact with them and uses popular trends to talk about his policies. As Slate reported, he began using the app specifically to help his 2020 campaign for the Senate and has been more effective at gaining fans than many other politicians.

"Our campaign has built a robust and innovative digital program that is speaking directly to young voters on platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram about the issues that impact their lives, like stopping the spread of coronavirus, protecting our environment, tackling student loan debt, and passing a New Civil Rights Act," his press secretary Jake Best stated in an email to the Augusta Chronicle, emphasizing the Ossoff team's commitment to meeting young voters on their own territory.

According to data provided by CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, youth turnout was a massive factor in the 2020 elections. In Georgia, voters aged 18-29 were particularly crucial, accounting for 20% of the overall vote. Out of those younger voters, about 58% picked Joe Biden over Donald Trump, who only received 39%. So it makes sense that Ossoff would form a strategy for creating and inspiring social media engagement — including, according to Vogue, a lot of "internet thirst" over his looks.

During the 2020 elections, Jon Ossoff challenged the Republican senator David Perdue for his Georgia seat. The race took a nasty turn when The Forward reported that Perdue's campaign had enlarged Ossoff's nose in a vicious Facebook ad, which was later deleted. "This is the oldest, most obvious, least original anti-Semitic trope in history," Ossoff tweeted at the time, pointing out how Jewish noses have always been a target of racist stereotypes. "Senator, literally no one believes your excuses."

Perdue's campaign team denied making any changes to the picture, telling ABC News that an "outside vendor" altered the size and "distorted the image" through a filter. "Obviously, this was accidental, but to ensure there is absolutely no confusion, we have immediately removed the image from Facebook," their statement read.

"Anybody who implies that this was anything other than an inadvertent error is intentionally misrepresenting Senator Perdue's strong and consistent record of standing firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of hate," Perdue's rep insisted.

Jon Ossoff burst into the national limelight when Georgia became a crucial battleground in the Democratic Party's fight for the Senate.

As The New York Times reported, the law in Georgia dictates that a politician has to receive more than 50% of the vote to actually win any election. If none of the candidates win a majority, then the state must hold a runoff election, in which the top two contenders keep fighting for the prize. After the 2020 elections, this meant that Ossoff and Raphael Warnock had to keep running against their Republican counterparts. And once it became clear that the Democrats would have to gain those seats to have a majority in the Senate, allowing them to win votes, the race to raise funds was on.

Ossoff actually managed to raise more money than any congressional candidate in the history of the American government, per Forbes, ending up with $162.6 million. His rival David Perdue received support from Republicans across the country but he still fell behind, with a total of $103 million in donations.

The fight between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue made national headlines in December 2020 after Perdue declined to participate in a debate, per The Hill.

Standing opposite the empty podium where his rival would have been, Ossoff argued that "it shows an astonishing arrogance and sense of entitlement for Georgia's senior U.S. senator to believe he shouldn't have to debate at a moment like this in our history," slamming Perdue for his absence. He also criticized Perdue's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Georgia, declaring that America was losing "thousands of people per day" because of politicians like him.

The Georgia Democrat also revealed that he had planned to ask Perdue about why he had opposed stimulus checks. "If I had the opportunity to ask the senator a question, if the senator were not too much of a coward to debate in public, then that's what I'd ask him," Ossoff added. According to the AP, Perdue's communications director explained the Republican senator's absence by announcing on Twitter that the time of the debate conflicted with a Donald Trump rally he wanted to attend. 

When his win was announced, Jon Ossoff made history and broke a few different records. Per Rolling Stone, he became "the first Jewish senator ever elected by the state of Georgia," as well as the first Jewish politician to win a Senate seat in the South since Benjamin F. Jonas was elected in the 19th century. Ossoff's age was also something of note, since he was the youngest Democrat to become a senator since Joe Biden himself in 1973. The politician wasn't alone in his achievements either, since his fellow Georgia Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock became the first Black American to ever reach "statewide office" in their state.

In his victory speech, Ossoff promised Georgia voters that he would represent them, regardless of whether they voted for him or not. "This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of this state, for all the people of this state, and they will be my guiding principles as I serve this state," the senator swore, per CBS. "Everybody who cast your ballot, everybody who put your faith and confidence in democracy's capacity to deliver the representation we deserve, whether you were for me or against me, I'll be for you."

Jon Ossoff isn't shy when it comes to bragging about his wife and her achievements. As NPR noted, Dr. Alisha Kramer is an Emory Healthcare OB-GYN resident, who has often joined her husband to speak about public health. The pair met in high school, per The Forward, and both attended Georgetown University. They dated for 12 years before Ossoff eventually popped the question. And in one Facebook Live, he described her as "my favorite person in the whole world, my best friend, my wife, the amazing Dr. Alisha Kramer, OB/GYN, who is my hero and my role model and my guide."

Kramer's career has been a priority for the couple on several occasions, since they decided not to live in Atlanta's Sixth District, where Ossoff was running for office in 2017, so that she could easily walk to medical school. "I'm proud to be supporting her career," the politician told The Hill in response to criticism, adding that he had been "very transparent" about where he lived.

On the night that Ossoff was elected in January 2020, Kramer couldn't appear by his side because she was too busy at her hospital. As Patricia Murphy reported on Twitter, the politician was anxiously watching the results with his campaign team, since Kramer was "working an overnight shift," meaning that she would have to find out the news in between patients.

When Jon Ossoff was sworn in to Congress, the Georgia politician paid tribute to his heritage and a civil rights hero by picking a special Hebrew Bible.

As The Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, the book had previously been owned by Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, a civil rights advocate who had not only worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr., but established what the New Georgia Encyclopedia describes as being "a close personal friendship" with the minister. "That book isn't just about the synagogue and my Jewish background," Ossoff told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reflecting on why he chose the Hebrew Bible. "It's also about the necessity of reanimating the spirit of the civil rights movement and building alliances to pass landmark civil rights legislation."

Rothschild was the rabbi at Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple, a historic landmark that was bombed by white supremacists in 1958. Speaking with The Washington Post, the Temple's current senior rabbi, Rabbi Peter S. Berg, said it was "a special honor" for that particular Bible to play such a significant role in Ossoff's swearing in ceremony, noting that it was a "way to honor the work that he did with Dr. King to make this a better world."

Jon Ossoff may be relatively new to the game, but he's already done quite well for himself. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Ossoff is personally worth $4 million; according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his net worth reportedly could go up all the way to $8.6 million. All of this is based on financial disclosures he made during the election.

With that said, some of his opponents from the other side of the aisle have made a point to take swipes at his bank account and point out that he comes from a well-off family. According to the AP, he inherited an undisclosed chunk of change from his leather factory-owning grandfather in 2013, which went toward the documentary company Insight. Former Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler called him a "trust-fund socialist," and his opponent in the Georgia runoff also called out his finances. "I'd like him to explain where his money comes from, really, in his business," his rival David Perdue stated during one of their debates, per The Washington Post, in an effort to try to undermine the young politician. 

"I openly acknowledge that the opportunity I've had is a function of my parents' hard work . . . the opportunity to get a great education without debt, the opportunity to do what I love and pursue my passion, which is confronting and exposing injustice and the abuse of power," Ossoff said in response.