Recent Headlines Underscore Ossoff’s Big Weaknesses

With early voting well underway, Jon Ossoff cannot afford more bad headlines about his key vulnerabilities. Yet lately that’s exactly what he’s gotten concerning his out of state money and ties to Nancy Pelosi.

First, Ossoff has long faced criticism because the overwhelming majority of his campaign donations come from outside Georgia. With the release of his latest FEC filing, that narrative has only become more pronounced. A FEC report covering March through May, showed that a whopping 97.5% of Ossoff’s contributions came from outside Georgia:

“The filing, covering donations received from March 30 through May 30, shows that only 2,158, or 2.5 percent, of the 86,313 individual contributions the campaign received were from Georgians. A smaller percentage of those Georgia donations came from donors within the Sixth Congressional District that Ossoff is running to represent.”

Fittingly for a candidate so aligned with Nancy Pelosi, California ranks first as a source of donations for Ossoff:

“The leading source of contributions for Ossoff during April and May was California, where 20,251 contributions originated. An additional 8,251 came from New York.”

Speaking of Pelosi, a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll highlights just how much of a problem Ossoff’s connection to Pelosi will be for voters in Georgia. The poll shows that Pelosi is viewed unfavorably across the political divide in the district:

“A new Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows that 58 percent of likely voters in the 6th hold an unfavorable view of Pelosi, now the House minority leader. As speaker from 2007 to 2011, Pelosi helped engineer the House passage of Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul. The ABT Associates survey shows the hatred isn’t only concentrated among Republican voters (of which only 4 percent hold a favorable view): among independents, nearly two-thirds said they weren’t fans of the California Democrat. Even among the Democrats surveyed, Pelosi’s support level wasn’t all that high. Only 71 percent said they viewed her favorably.”

Throughout this campaign, Ossoff has benefited from national Democrats attempts to prop him up. Yet thanks to those attempts, the narrative that Ossoff is out of touch with Georgia voters is only intensifying.