Elections
Ossoff ran in the Democratic primary election to unseat then-incumbent Republican senator David Perdue in the 2020 Senate election in Georgia. On June 10, Ossoff advanced to the general election by winning 53 percent of the vote. In July 2020, Perdue's campaign ran a Facebook advertisement in which Ossoff's nose was digitally altered to be larger, which Ossoff criticized as "one of the most classic anti-Semitic tropes". Perdue's campaign said that Perdue had not seen the image and that the widening and elongation of his nose was done by a vendor. The Perdue campaign pulled the advertisement.
By October 2020, Ossoff raised more than $100 million for his campaign, making him the best-funded Senate candidate in U.S. history.
In the November 3 general election, Perdue received 2,462,617 votes (49.73%), while Ossoff received 2,374,519 votes (47.95%). Since no candidate received a majority of the vote on November 3, the top two finishers (Perdue and Ossoff) advanced to a January 5, 2021, runoff election.
The closing argument of the 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.
Ossoff declared victory on the morning of January 6, 2021, and most major news outlets called the race for him later that day. While Perdue won more counties, Ossoff won overwhelmingly in the inner ring of the Atlanta metropolitan area. He won Cobb and Gwinnett counties, which have recently swung Democratic, by more than 40,200 and 74,200 votes, respectively. The latter exceeded his statewide margin of approximately 55,000 votes. He ran slightly behind Warnock, who defeated Kelly Loeffler by 70,400 votes by also running up his margins in the Atlanta area. Perdue conceded the election on January 8.
The vote was certified on January 19, which allowed the newly elected senators to take office the following day. On January 20, Ossoff was sworn into the Senate by the Vice President Kamala Harris.
When Ossoff took office, he became the first Jewish senator from Georgia and the first Jewish senator elected from the Deep South since Richard Stone of Florida in 1974, the first senator born in the 1980s, and, at 33, the youngest member of the chamber and the first millennial senator to be elected. He was sworn into office using the Bible of Jacob M. Rothschild, the deceased rabbi of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple in Atlanta, which was bombed in 1958 by white supremacists for Rothschild's civil rights activism. Ossoff had his Bar Mitzvah at the Temple.
Ossoff is the first Democrat elected to a full term in the Senate from Georgia since Max Cleland in 1996. He and Warnock are the first Democratic U.S. senators from Georgia since Zell Miller left office in 2005. Ossoff assumed the role of senior U.S. senator from Georgia once he was sworn into office, making him the youngest senior senator since Robert M. La Follette Jr. and the most junior senior senator since Hiram Fong, who was 99th in seniority from Hawaii's admission until the end of the 86th Congress in 1961.
Ossoff's election alongside Raphael Warnock was critical in securing a 50–50 Senate majority for Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote.
Ossoff is running for re-election, and will face U.S. representative Mike Collins in the general election.
