A Full Exclusive Interview with Senate Candidate Jon Ossoff
I knocked on the door of the Grant Park home, rubbing my sweaty palms off on the sides of my jean jacket. A few shaky moments later, the door opened to present a completely different version of the politician I had long anticipated meeting. After spending several months researching, questioning, and analyzing Jon Ossoff’s online footprint, I was taken aback to find him standing in front of me in his socked feet, just like any other ordinary guy. “Hey,” he said as he reached out a hand. “I’m Jon.”
Through an incredible connection with a Galloway teacher, I had the opportunity to interview U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff. Ossoff first emerged as a prominent Democratic politician after his run for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in the most expensive congressional race in history, raising a remarkable $23 million. Although he did end up losing to Congresswoman Karen Handel, Ossoff made a noteworthy dent in Georgia’s historically red demographic and quickly became a household name across the country.
Over the past two years since the loss, Ossoff has worked tirelessly to understand the nation’s partisan atmosphere and the changing political culture. He believes wholeheartedly that his experience and abundant knowledge on today’s political issues can change the broken political climate.
Annie Levy: I just would love to start by hearing a little bit about what you were like in high school and your overall journey to where you are now.
Jon Ossoff: I arrived at an interest in politics from an interest in history; I was a big history buff in junior high and high school. I read Congressman John Lewis’ memoir Walking In the Wind about his experience in the Civil Rights movement, and I was so inspired by his story that I wrote him a letter asking if I could come work in his office. He invited me to work in his Washington office while I was still a high school student, and that experience changed my life and really awakened me to how history and politics are linked. It was also around the time of the Iraq war, so this was 2003 or 2004, and I was opposed to the war and saw it unfolding before our eyes and recognized from that observation how politics was driving history and how important engaging in democracy was to shape history.
AL: And you’ve done more work with Congressman John Lewis now on this current campaign, correct?
JO: Yes, I’m proud to have Congressman Lewis’ endorsement, and he and I launched a major statewide voter registration initiative with a rally at the MLK Rec Center a few weeks ago. Here in Georgia, as you probably know, we have huge issues with voting rights and disenfranchisement and voter suppression. That means that voter registration is critical because that means that folks are being thrown off of the voting rolls by the state, and we’ve got a lot of young people who are turning 18 and becoming eligible to vote and a lot of people who are moving into the state who need to be registered. One of my messages for the students and everyone who will be reading this piece is that voter registration is so important, and if you’re a junior or a senior and you’re going to be 18 when it comes time for the election, you got to get registered and encouraged your friends to get registered. It needs to be a full community effort.
AL: Of course. I know Galloway works really hard to have voter registration booths on campus, and they’ve had students who’ve really taken the initiative on it. Kind of switching gears a little bit, your career has been a fusion of politics and journalism. I would like to know how has your work as a journalist helped prepare you as a politician?
JO: That’s a great question. I left politics and government in 2012 because after working for five years in D.C, I had become disillusioned with the process and the political system and all the corruption and hypocrisy and partisanship. That’s why I first perceived further education - got a master’s degree in economics - and then went into journalism. The company that I run now was founded in 1991, and we specialize in undercover anti-corruption investigations, investigations of war crimes, and human rights abuses. Compared to politics, journalism is pure. It’s about finding the truth and bringing the truth to the public. The work we do is about holding people accountable when they abuse fellow human beings and when they steal from the public purse. But investigative journalism also makes enemies because we are exposing people who are breaking the law, who are violating human rights, who are engaged in corruption. The folks whom we investigate don’t take that sitting down; they fight back because their reputations are on the line and sometimes they face the threat of prosecution. By the same token, people who are in power, whether they’re here in Georgia or in Washington, don’t take it sitting down when you challenge their power. Being able to confront entrenched power and withstand the inevitable smears and counter attacks that come when you expose people who are abusing their power. In that regard, politics and journalism are similar.
AL: What kind of specific backlash have you received from your more current works on corruption?
JO: Well, on the journalistic side, my company does not conduct investigations related to American politics because I am politically active, and it needs to be clear that there’s no overlap between my journalism and political engagement because that could damage the credibility of [my work]. Journalistically, for example, we conducted a two-year undercover investigation of corruption in FIFA, the international soccer organization. We secretly filmed dozens of referees taking bribes, including a World Cup referee scheduled to initiate in Moscow at the World Cup. We secretly filmed a member of the FIFA council, which is the supreme governing body of FIFA, taking huge amounts of cash and soliciting $13 million in bribes. One of my close colleagues Ahmed Hussein-Suale who helped lead that undercover operation was assassinated last January in retaliation for that report. People will use and resort to violence where exposure of their wrongdoing threatens their reputation, their lively hood, and their freedom.
AL: So going back a little to voter registration and first time voting, a lot of my peers or people a few years older than me are going to be voting for the first time next November. I really would like to know why should they care about your fight against corruption and really your campaign? Why are you the representative for them, or more simply why Jon Ossoff?
JO: Well because it’s our present and it’s our future, particularly for young people. We have such deep challenges that we face, but they’re also not mysterious challenges. We know what they are, we know that our political system is compromised by corruption. We know here in Georgia we have a poverty crisis; one in three children in rural Georgia lives in poverty. We have a healthcare crisis: the highest maternity mortality rate in the country, half of our counties have no OB-GYN physicians, rural hospitals and clinics closed. We have an environmental crisis; scientists overwhelmingly are warning us that climate change poses potentially an existential threat to the species. We know that we have crumbling infrastructure that we need to rehabilitate and revolutionize so that we can live better and more efficiently and cleaner. The problems that we face are not mysterious, and the solutions are not mysterious either. But in order to enact those solutions, we have to generate political power. You have to have power to make change, and in a democracy, the way that we generate political power is by organizing to engage in democracy, to vote. So young people today, who I think are more attuned and aware of what’s going on than many generations of young people before, have an obligation not just to wait to be called upon to get engaged, but to engage in their own immediate self-interest. My view is that if Donald Trump is reelected for another four years, if a clear message is not sent by the defeat of those who are enabling him, and if we don’t solve these critical problems that we’re aware of - like I said they’re not mysterious - then the consequences for the country will be dire, that means the consequences for young people in this country will be dire.
AL: And you think that for your campaign is the most fitting and efficient for young people who want to see change happen?
JO: Georgia will be one of the most critical states in the country next year. The presidential election may be decided here. Control of the US Senate will be decided here; we have two US Senate seats that will be decided here in Georgia next year. A statewide campaign, a statewide US Senate campaign, is the perfect opportunity for young people to plug in and get engaged and to really make a difference not just for our state but for the country.
AL: You’ve said before that you find David Perdue to be the caricature of Washington corruption. So, if you do defeat Perdue next year, how will you work to extend this effort of defeating corruption in Washington in general?
JO: So, there was a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United, which a little over a decade ago opened the floodgates for unlimited anonymous spending on political propaganda. When we turn on our televisions and we see political advertising now, we’re not entitled to know who is paying for it, we’re therefore not entitled to know why they’re paying for it, or what their agenda is, and that secrecy and all that secret money flowing into our political system, is at the root of so much of the corruption that we face. So, my first act as Georgia’s United States Senator will be to cosponsor legislation, a constitutional amendment, to overturn the Citizens United decision and get dark money out of politics. I would also note that David Perdue has taken 2 million dollars from corporate PACs to build his political war chest. In this race, I’m not taking any money from corporate PACs. He hasn’t held a public town hall in five years as our Senator, not one. He evades questions from the public. But you may have seen a couple of weeks ago when the President came to town to raise money for him, if you wanted a moment of our Senator’s time, it cost you $100,000. That’s pay to play, that’s pay to access, that’s corruption within itself.
AL: Your loss in 2017 to Karen Handel was the most expensive House race to date. How are you motivated by this loss to perform better next year?
JO: Look, six weeks before I got into that race, the incumbent Republican Tom Price had been reelected by 23%. This was Newt Gingrich’s district, this was not a district that was considered competitive, let alone winnable. Six months later, we moved the needle in Georgia’s 6th District by 20%, and that was with the national Republican party fully engaged in its defense as their highest priority. What that proved to me and what all of the volunteers, more than 13,000 volunteers, who came out of the woodwork to get involved, the more than 400,000 individuals who pitched in an average of $21 to support me, is that we can fight anywhere. People power, ordinary people volunteering in politics and contributing $10 to $15, can go toe to toe with the corrupt apparatus of super PACs and corporate money and special interest money that funded most of the Republican campaign in the 6th district. I was inspired by that experience. Of course the loss was tough and disappointing, but it confirmed to me that when we organize people, we can put up a hell of a fight anywhere, even when the odds are against us.
AL: As you know, today’s political climate is incredibly divided. I really would like to know how are you as a millennial democrat, as a younger democrat, working to lessen that divide? By my research, you’d be one of the youngest Senators to date. With this lack of bipartisanship in our country right now, do you feel that you have an advantage by being a younger person, or a disadvantage perhaps?
JO: My sense is that young people, my self included, are not motivated by allegiance to a political party or this sort of red versus blue battle. We’re motivated because elections have real human consequences. When I travel the state campaigning, I don’t make any assumptions about voters. I don’t presume that anyone will or won’t support me. I try to present practical solutions to the problems that we face regarding everyone’s interests. One of the things you may be studying in American History is something called the Southern Strategy, which has been the Republican party’s playbook in the south since Nixon. That strategy is to divide southerners along racial lines so that we fail to grasp our shared interests. Because our interests are shared, and there is more consensus on the key issues than many people think. A few examples: an overwhelming majority of Georgians believe that every citizen should have healthcare, an overwhelming majority support Roe v. Wade, an overwhelming majority of Georgians want to save and preserve our natural environment, an overwhelming majority of Georgians want us to invest in our infrastructure and our clean energy. There is much broader consensus than the political circus and noise and conversation lead us to believe. I think that’s a winning message to take statewide in Georgia and a winning agenda.
AL: And you believe that you can convey this broader consensus and communicate well to everyone across the board to win?
JO: Yeah, I mean, citizens want public servants and candidates for office to demonstrate how they’re going to solve practical daily problems for them. Lowering prescription drug prices, making healthcare universally accessible, saving the environment, investing in infrastructure, clean energy and transit transportation. These are practical contributions that will improve lives, and there doesn’t need to be partisanship in the decision making of whether we save our environment. The reason that question is so contentious, for example in environmental policies, is because of the extent of political corruption in our system. The only reason we haven’t taken action on climate change thus far and made massive investments in clean energy is because of the power of the fossil fuel industry, [and] the money that industry spends on political propaganda and lobbying and political contributions. It’s not because there isn’t broader will to solve the problems.
AL: Do you think that the current impeachment process taking place could be a mistake on the Democrats’ part that could end up hurting your campaign in 2020?
JO: I think it’s above politics. I don’t think that Congress, in this case, should be batted by political considerations, I think they should be batted by constitutional consideration. My view is that if the president abused his power and tried to get a foreign power to investigate his domestic political opponent and pressured that foreign power to do so by dangling US security assistance to that country, that is an impeachable offense. I believe that the common sense and perception of most people will be that that’s an abusive power that must be punished.
AL: But do you think that it is possible that if the impeachment doesn’t go so well, it could change the public perception of the Democratic party in general, and that could be something that could end up harming your campaign?
JO: I’m not prejudging the outcome of the investigation at this point. I’m waiting for all of the evidence to be presented. If all of the evidence substantiates the allegation against the president, then in my view, his conduct would be so obviously inappropriate and so obviously abusive of his power that it will damage his political standing, and it will damage the political standing of his allies, like Senator David Perdue.
AL: I would just like to wrap up here by asking how can students my age get involved in politics?
JO: My advice is to go to ElectJon.com and click “Volunteer.” We are building a massive grassroots army statewide. Our ambition is that it will be unprecedented, building on the work that Stacey Abrams has done over the last three years to knock on more doors and contact more voters and generate stronger turn out than the history in this state. There’s nothing more effective than knocking on our neighbors doors to make that happen; that is the single most effective thing that anyone can do. It’s more effective than tweeting, it’s more effective than even something that I encourage which is calling your representatives and making your voice heard. Knocking on our neighbors doors gets out the vote. My humble plea to students at Galloway and across the state is to join my team, get out and canvass, build community, bring friends out, and win statewide in Georgia in 2020 and send a message that will be heard around the world.
By Annie Levy