Jon Ossoff is reportedly considering challenging Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue in 2020 after the Democrat’s failed bid last year to represent the state’s 6th District.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Ossoff had held a town hall meeting in northeast Georgia on Thursday as he mulls another run for public office.
The meeting, which reportedly drew nearly 100 people, took place in rural and deeply-conservative Habersham County, which the local newspaper noted as a possible attempt by Democrat to test his appeal with an unfamiliar crowd.
{mosads}“There’s more and more cynical politics. Student debt is skyrocketing. We’re still maintaining this unfathomably large empire that costs trillions of dollars,” Ossoff said at the meeting. “We’re doing nothing for crumbling infrastructure at home. And we wonder why there’s so much anger.”
“It’s because the people in charge are squandering the power and wealth entrusted in them to make our lives better,” the Georgia Democrat added.
Ossoff also waded into the ongoing voting rights debate in Georgia and called election tactics “reminiscent of Jim Crow” laws.
A group backed by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who lost a close election in November, filed a lawsuit in Georgia that seeks to overhaul the state’s electoral process, according to media reports last month.
“We now have a system where a shocking number of Georgians are convinced their vote doesn’t count,” he said. “I liked seeing Stacey Abrams fight at the end of this thing. I liked that she decided to make an issue of the flaws.”
Ossoff reportedly called on Abrams to take on Perdue earlier this month, but he has yet to rule out his own bid for the seat, according to an earlier story by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Since his contest last year, Ossoff has supported other legislative candidates as he works to keep up his public profile.
Last year, the 31-year-old investigative filmmaker came close to delivering a major upset in a district where President Trump narrowly won in the presidential election.
After securing nearly half of the vote in the election against Republican Karen Handel last year, Ossoff found himself in a runoff against Handel, who eventually won.
Handel lost her reelection bid this year against Democrat Lucy McBath.