GA Senate Candidate Jon Ossoff Discusses Runoff Election

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I mean, do you think lightning could strike twice? You know, it looks like the state will flip blue in the presidential, but what about in the Senate races?

JON OSSOFF, US SENATE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE: Christiane, thank you for the opportunity to be with you. It’s an honor. And it’s really not a matter of lightning striking, it’s a decade of work here; registering voters, organizing communities, mobilizing turnout, extraordinary turnout among black voters in Georgia. Work over this decade, much of it led by Stacey Abrams to expand the electorate here, and work that’s continuing now. We are running the largest voter registration, get out to vote effort, in American history in Georgia right now, because the stakes are so high. Because for this incoming administration, to be able to empower public health experts, resource a robust public health response and invest in economic recovery, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will need to be able to govern and not to be mired in partisan gridlock in Washington. And that’s why the Senate is so vital.

AMANPOUR: Of course, I understand that from your point of view. I just want to ask you, because you mentioned Stacey Abrams and, obviously, she’s getting a huge amount of gratitude and recognition from this amazing voter turnout. Are you working with her now? And I guess, you know, in experience, you’ve obviously studied runoffs and all the rest of it. Can people be motivated a second time to come out in the kinds of numbers that they did the first time?

OSSOFF: Well, first of all, yes, Stacey is a close friend and she’s heavily engaged and working hard to ensure that we win these two runoffs. And to your second question, this really is about momentum, and energy and enthusiasm. And we haven’t had a robustly contested runoff election for a federal office in Georgia in over a decade. But Joe Biden’s victory here and all of the work that I just discussed has put the wind in our sails. We’ve hit the ground running. I just finished a seven city four-day tour of the state. The enthusiasm is off the charts. It’s all about continuing the work of getting out to vote and registering new voters. There are 23,000 young voters, for example, who become eligible to vote just between November 3rd and this January 5th runoff.