On paper, Jon Ossoff has plenty of reasons to break party ranks as the government shutdown drags into a third week: The 38-year-old Georgian is the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for re-election next year and his home state has more than 81,000 federal workers at risk for furloughs and firings
In reality, Ossoff is sticking closely to his party’s strategy of trying to reframe the shutdown fight as a battle over health care — and has emerged as an object lesson in the limits of Republican efforts to focus pressure on the Democrats’ soft spots.
Part of that calculus is that it is much riskier to alienate your own party’s base than to break ranks in hopes of appealing to swing voters. The bigger issue, fellow senators say, is that there is little belief today’s shutdown will matter much at all when voters start heading to polls a year from now.
“It just doesn’t stick,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D) said in an interview. “I think every year the attention span of the American people gets shorter and shorter.”
“Nobody is going to be paying attention to the shutdown next November,” added Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who pointed to how Republicans gained seats in the midterms after the 2013 shutdown fight they instigated.
Even though Ossoff represents a state that voted for President Donald Trump last year and his re-election race is ranked as a toss-up by leading campaign prognosticators, he has positioned himself in lockstep with his party’s leadership. He opposed the GOP-led stopgap funding bill in March, embraced calls to impeach Trump earlier this year and has sparred with Trump nominees in Senate hearings.
It’s a break from the tack-to-the-center playbook used by swing-state Democrats for decades. Ossoff as of last month had voted with Trump just 8 percent of the time, according to tracking from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Two other purple-state Democrats — Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — have voted with Republicans to pass a House-approved bill that would end the shutdown.
Asked about the standoff this week, Ossoff hewed closely to his party’s main message on expiring health insurance subsidies and foisted blame on House Republicans for leaving town amid the standoff.
What Americans are trying to get “their heads around,” he told reporters, “is, with health insurance premiums set to double for more than 20 million Americans and the federal government shut down, why the U.S. House of Representatives is shut down this week.”
That line of argument is in keeping with his party’s main bet: that midterm voters won’t remember the shutdown so much as they remember that Democrats were fighting on behalf of Americans’ health care benefits. More than 20 million use the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire, including an estimated 1.4 million Georgians.
Ossoff and other Georgia Democrats have seized on health care as a focus for their political messaging in the state. During a recent event in Georgia, Ossoff raised concerns about the impact the GOP’s new domestic policy law enacted in July will have on rural hospitals, which stand to be harmed by Medicaid cuts that are only partially offset by a new fund for their benefit.
Even if some of Ossoff’s Republican colleagues are skeptical he will face political consequences for lining up behind the rest of his party amid the shutdown, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm is hammering him over the decision, including circulating a list of federal services that have been paused in the state and running digital ads attacking him since the shutdown began.
“Jon Ossoff is knowingly hurting Georgia’s small businesses and ripping away critical government services from Georgia veterans, farmers, and families all because he wants to give free healthcare to illegal aliens and appease his far-left supporters in California,” NRSC spokesperson Nick Puglia said in a statement.
Republicans have long viewed Ossoff as a prime target for the 2026 midterm map. He defeated Georgia Sen. David Perdue in a down-to-the-wire upset that wasn’t settled until Jan. 6, 2021 — hours before the Capitol riot.
The 2021 Georgia race — which also saw Democrat Raphael Warnock defeat incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler — remains infamous in GOP circles as an opportunity lost due to self-inflicted wounds. Ahead of the election, Trump cast serious doubts on mail-in voting in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, which Republican operatives believe cost them victory in both races.
Now Republicans are contending with a crowded primary field eager to take Ossoff on that has yet to see a clear frontrunner emerge. They are betting that once Trump makes an endorsement, GOP voters will rally and make Ossoff a one-term senator. At least one of the candidates, Rep. Mike Collins, has launched digital ads attacking Ossoff over the shutdown.
Ossoff, however, has spent years preparing to do battle in what has long been eyed as a hotly contested race. His team has billed him as “MAGA’s #1 target” in fundraising appeals as he drums up support among committed Democratic voters, who will be crucial for him.
His campaign announced last week he had raised $12 million in the latest quarter, padding a formidable war chest that now stands at $21 million. Both parties are likely to pour in tens of millions of dollars in outside spending; the 2020 Georgia Senate races were the most expensive of the cycle.
Democrats also believe Ossoff’s health-care-focused strategy in the shutdown fight is getting backup from an unlikely in-state wingwoman: GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The MAGA stalwart emerged this month as a vocal advocate for her party needing to come up with a plan to deal with the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Democrats have relished Greene’s comments as a sign that even a figure once on the fringes of the Republican Party is acknowledging that insurance premiums will spike without congressional action.
“Why would Marjorie Taylor Greene go out so strong on that issue? She’s in Georgia, and I think Georgia was getting some of the first notices,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “I think Georgians are seeing at the front end how bad it’s going to be.”
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
