Georgia on the minds of donors in California
Candidate using anti-Trump sentiment in Golden State to help fund campaign
California political donors disgusted with President Donald Trump have found an unlikely standard bearer: a 30year-old Georgia congressional candidate with no electoral experience.
Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running in a suburban Atlanta district that once elected Newt Gingrich and which has voted only
“I want to send a message to Trump that his positions are not popular.” — Roy Kaplan, 71, retired Oakland physician
for Republicans for Congress since 1978, has captured liberal Californians’ political imaginations — and their checkbooks. He’s raked in $8.2 million in the past three months, almost all from outside of Georgia, thanks to a strong antiTrump message. And he’s reported more individual contributions from the Bay Area than from his entire home state.
Ossoff, a boyish investigative filmmaker and former congressional aide, is one of 18 candidates competing in next Tuesday’s special election to replace Tom Price, who became Trump’s secretary of health and human services. Polls show Ossoff in first place, hovering around 40 percent. The top two finishers, regardless of party, will advance to a runoff if no candidate gets to 50 percent.
‘Make Trump furious’
If Ossoff wins, his tactic of focusing on Trump could be a playbook for other Democratic congressional candidates around the country in next year’s mid-term congressional elections, political analysts and Democratic fundraisers say.
“Right now, there isn’t a whole lot we can do,” said Amy Rao, a Palo Alto tech executive who last year hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, just months after inviting then-President Barack Obama into her home for a Democratic fundraiser. “This is one of those things that’s very tangible, that could have a tremendous impact, because every seat matters if we can win it.”
Rao gave Ossoff $1,000 after reading about him on Facebook. She said she thought social media was the key to his financial success: She shared stories about his campaign with Bay Area friends who wanted to do something to fight Trump.
Although the 6th Congressional District has been a Republican stronghold for decades, Trump appears less popular there than in many places in the South. Last November, even as Price won re-election by 23 percentage points, Trump eked out a win in the district, beating Clinton by less than two percentage points.
That, Ossoff’s campaign says, is a sign that there’s an opening for a Democrat, especially one laserfocused on Trump. Ossoff’s campaign tagline is “Make Trump Furious.”
It’s paid off big time with Democratic donors around the country who are still heartsick about Trump’s victory. Ossoff’s huge support from Californians suggests that all politics is national in 2017, with few elections escaping Trump’s political shadow.
“I want to send a message to Trump that his positions are not popular,” said Roy Kaplan, 71, a retired physician in Oakland who has made 25 online donations to Ossoff over the past three months. In total, he’s given $818, spurred by repeated emails from the campaign.
More than 95 percent of Ossoff’s donations have come from people like Kaplan who live outside of Georgia, Ossoff’s campaign says. The vast majority of contributions — more than $7.75 million — came through ActBlue, the liberal political website, according to the Federal Election Commission report Ossoff filed last week.
While the majority of Ossoff’s donations are under $200 and thus not included in public records, more than three times as many of the itemized donations he reported are from California as from Georgia. He reported 5,822 donations from California, which totaled $547,857, compared with 1,578 donations from his home state, totaling $600,141.
Ossoff reported 2,628 individual donations from people living in the nine Bay Area counties, significantly more than from all of Georgia — although of a smaller total value.
Ossoff has also received support from two East Bay politicians: Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Pleasanton, donated $2,000 from his political action committee, and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, gave $1,000 from her PAC. Swalwell will attend a house party Wednesday night in Georgia in support of Ossoff and is organizing a phone bank for him in Dublin on Saturday.
“Jon is young enough to know what’s happening with America’s biggest, best-educated and most diverse generation, yet his experience would be invaluable as we protect the progress we’ve made and look to a brighter future,” Swalwell said in an email.
Other special elections are taking place over the next few weeks in other Trump Cabinet members’ former congressional districts: Kansans went to the polls Tuesday and voted to replace ex-Rep. Mike Pompeo, now the CIA chief, with Republican Ron Estes. And Montanans vote in May to replace Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. But neither race was ever thought to be as competitive as Ossoff’s, and neither has gotten anywhere near the scale of national attention or money.
“There’s not many other races for Democrats to put any kind of political energy into right now,” said Trey Hood, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.
Possible liability
Ossoff’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about his fundraising. But political observers in Georgia say outof-state money could be a political liability.
“His opponents are already trying to reinforce this idea that he doesn’t live here, he’s too liberal, he gets all of his money from people who not only don’t have physical connections to the district but whose values are diametrically opposed to the district,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. (Ossoff lives just south of the district he’s campaigning in.)
Hood said Ossoff has run a “very slick campaign,” with an avalanche of TV advertising. His ads tend not to mention he’s a Democrat, instead talking up his plans to cut wasteful spending and hitting Trump for impulsive decision-making and embarrassing America.
But even as he tries to appeal to conservative voters, Ossoff has quietly courted donors in America’s most liberal enclaves. He’s even hosted video chats with big-dollar contributors thousands of miles away in Sonoma County.
Marguerite Longtin, who lives in Sebastopol and runs a dance hall in Santa Rosa, donated $1,200 to Ossoff’s campaign after she and other local Democratic donors had a personal FaceTime conversation with him.
“I really like what he stood for,” Longtin said. “It’s imperative that Democrats bring back some of the seats so we don’t go backward in our policies, where this country is headed right now.”
Many of Ossoff’s California donors have never set foot in Georgia, let alone in his district. But Dorothy Schafer, a Mountain View retiree who gave Ossoff $350, lived in the district for 30 years. She said she knew it would be an uphill battle for any Democrat, but she felt she had to do something to fight politicians in Washington, D.C., who were ignoring climate change.
“We’re not going to change the president in the next four years,” Schafer said, “but we can change the Congress.”