Thomas Jonathan Ossoff is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Georgia since 2021.
73 Facts About Jon Ossoff
2.
Jon Ossoff narrowly lost the race to former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel.
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In 2020, Jon Ossoff won the Democratic nomination for the 2020 US Senate election in Georgia to run against then-incumbent Republican senator David Perdue.
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Jon Ossoff serves alongside fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock, who defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler in the 2020 Senate special election runoff, on January 5,2021.
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Jon Ossoff took office on January 20,2021, ultimately becoming the senior senator from Georgia.
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Warnock and Jon Ossoff are the first Democrats to represent Georgia in the United States Senate since Zell Miller in 2005.
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Jon Ossoff was born on February 16,1987, in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Jon Ossoff's mother, Heather Fenton, is an Australian immigrant who was born and raised in Sydney and immigrated to the United States at the age of 23.
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Jon Ossoff co-founded NewPower PAC, an organization that works to elect women to local office across Georgia.
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Jon Ossoff was raised Jewish and, due to his mother being a gentile, formally converted to the religion prior to his bar mitzvah.
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Jon Ossoff's ancestors fled pogroms in the early 20th century, and he noted in an interview that he grew up among Holocaust survivor relatives and detailed how this greatly influenced him and his worldviews.
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Jon Ossoff previously held dual Australian citizenship through his mother.
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Jon Ossoff attended The Paideia School, an independent school in Atlanta.
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In 2009, Jon Ossoff graduated from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service with a Bachelor of Science degree.
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Jon Ossoff attended classes taught by former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren.
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Jon Ossoff earned a Master of Science degree in international political economy from the London School of Economics in 2013.
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From 2013 to 2021, Jon Ossoff was the managing director and chief executive officer of Insight: The World Investigates, a London-based investigative television production company that works with reporters to create documentaries about corruption in foreign countries.
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Jon Ossoff was involved in producing a documentary about the staging of a play in Sierra Leone.
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Jon Ossoff had previously received an inheritance of an unknown amount from his grandfather, a former co-owner of a Massachusetts leather factory, of which he used $250,000 to co-fund Insight: TWI alongside company founder and former BBC reporter Ron McCullagh, who first met Jon Ossoff when he was 16-years-old during a family vacation to France and with whom he kept in contact afterward.
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Jon Ossoff quickly emerged as the most viable Democratic candidate out of a large field of candidates.
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Jon Ossoff was endorsed by congressmen Hank Johnson and John Lewis, and state House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams.
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Jon Ossoff received public support from US senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
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Jon Ossoff grew up in what is the 6th district, where his family still resides, although as of the election, he lived about 1.5 miles outside the district's boundaries in the neighboring 4th district.
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Jon Ossoff said he only lived in the 4th temporarily so that his girlfriend, now wife, who was then an Emory University medical student, could walk to work.
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Jon Ossoff led with about 48.1 percent of the vote, Republican candidate Karen Handel received 19.8 percent, while the remainder of votes were scattered for 16 other candidates.
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Jon Ossoff won all but 1 percent of the Democratic vote, while the Republican vote was more heavily split.
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Jon Ossoff broke national fundraising records for a US House candidate.
28.
On February 23,2018, Jon Ossoff announced he would not seek the seat in the regular election in 2018; the seat was won by Democrat Lucy McBath in November 2018.
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Jon Ossoff ran in the Democratic primary election to unseat then-incumbent Republican senator David Perdue in the 2020 Senate election in Georgia.
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In July 2020, Perdue's campaign ran a Facebook advertisement in which Jon Ossoff's nose was digitally altered to be larger, which Jon Ossoff criticized as "one of the most classic anti-Semitic tropes".
31.
The closing argument of the Jon Ossoff campaign focused on the $2,000 stimulus payments that he and Raphael Warnock would approve if they were to win their elections and give Democrats a majority in the Senate.
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Jon Ossoff declared victory on the morning of January 6,2021, and most major news outlets called the race for him later that day.
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Jon Ossoff won Cobb and Gwinnett counties, which have recently swung Democratic, by over 40,200 and 74,200 votes, respectively.
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Jon Ossoff ran slightly behind Warnock, who defeated Kelly Loeffler by 70,400 votes by running up his margins in the Atlanta area.
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When Ossoff took office, he became the first Jewish senator from Georgia and the first Jewish senator elected from the Deep South since Benjamin F Jonas of Louisiana in 1878, the first senator born in the 1980s, and, at 33, the youngest member of the chamber and the first millennial senator to be elected.
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Jon Ossoff was sworn into office using the Bible of Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, the late rabbi of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple in Atlanta, which was bombed in 1958 by white supremacists for Rothschild's civil rights activism.
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Jon Ossoff is the first Democrat elected to a full term in the Senate from Georgia since Max Cleland in 1996.
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On January20,2021, Jon Ossoff was sworn into the United States Senate in the 117th Congress by Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Jon Ossoff voted in favor of Avril Haines's nomination for director of national intelligence and General Lloyd Austin's nomination to serve as secretary of defense, as well as the required waiver for Austin to legally hold the position.
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In January 2022, Jon Ossoff introduced legislation that would ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading stocks.
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Jon Ossoff pledged to support only those judges who would uphold Roe v Wade, and he supports Planned Parenthood.
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Jon Ossoff is against the death penalty and supports its abolition.
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Jon Ossoff opposes both defunding the police, as well as abolishing the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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Jon Ossoff has advocated for demilitarizing the police and banning private prisons.
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Jon Ossoff supports reinstating Glass-Steagall, and he supports ending speculative trading.
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Jon Ossoff has supported stimulus spending in the wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Jon Ossoff supported an additional round of stimulus checks of $1,200 in late 2020.
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Jon Ossoff supports increasing economic relief for businesses and households affected by COVID-19 pandemic, and believes testing, treatment, and vaccines for COVID-19 should be free.
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Jon Ossoff voted in favor of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, an economic stimulus bill aimed at speeding up the United States' recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recession.
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Jon Ossoff's campaign promised to prioritize making education more affordable, while making trade school, vocational training, public colleges free, and supports debt forgiveness.
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Jon Ossoff accepts the Scientific opinion on climate change, and has said that "climate change is a threat to our security and prosperity".
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Jon Ossoff is pro GHG restrictions, and in 2017, he advocated investigations into failures to enforce environmental laws.
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In 2022, US Senator Jon Ossoff blocked a proposed titanium mine in the Okefenokee Swamp after the US Fish and Wildlife Service warned of severe potential damage to the wildlife refuge.
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Jon Ossoff believes human driven climate change is responsible for global warming, and supports investing in clean energy.
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Jon Ossoff resisted criticizing President Joe Biden for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, as other Democratic politicians had at the time, instead stating he was focused on "supporting the State Department and the Department of Defense as they work with limited time to expedite the evacuation" of stranded Americans and American-allied Afghans.
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Jon Ossoff has called for the repeal of "wasteful, anti-competitive special interest subsidies that make it hard for entrepreneurs to raise capital, enter the market, create jobs, and compete with larger firms who have lobbyists in Washington".
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Jon Ossoff is open to term limits for federal judges, and he voted to pass the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act in 2022.
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Jon Ossoff opposes the decision in Citizens United v FEC.
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Jon Ossoff has supported various gun control measures, including background checks, red flag laws, and an assault weapons ban.
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Jon Ossoff opposed both the March 2017 and May 2017 versions of the American Health Care Act, the House Republican bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act.
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Jon Ossoff said that the May 2017 version was worse than the earlier one "because it does even less to protect those with pre-existing conditions".
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Jon Ossoff told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he supported tax credits for small businesses related to health care.
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Jon Ossoff opposes Trump's border wall, but he maintains his support for strengthening borders while providing a path for DREAMers.
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Jon Ossoff describes his support for the LGBT community as "unwavering".
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Jon Ossoff supports raising the federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour.
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Jon Ossoff supports taxing to balance the budget, and he has advocated for undoing Trump-era tax cuts.
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Jon Ossoff wants to reduce the tax burden for small businesses and simplify family living by lowering taxes on all but the wealthiest Americans.
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Jon Ossoff opposes an increase in current federal income tax rates.
69.
Nevertheless, Jon Ossoff said that he would be willing to work with Trump on issues of mutual interest, such as infrastructure spending.
70.
Jon Ossoff voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment on the charge of incitement of insurrection following the 2021 United States Capitol attack, joining all Democrats and seven Republicans.
71.
Jon Ossoff is described as the "first Extremely Online senator".
72.
Jon Ossoff is married to Alisha Kramer, an obstetrics and gynecology resident at Emory University, and a graduate of Georgetown University and Emory University School of Medicine.
73.
Jon Ossoff married Kramer in 2017 after 12 years of dating.