Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff gambles on shutdown to save health subsidies as reelection bid looms

ATLANTA (AP) — There may be no rank-and-file Democratic senator with more at stake from the federal government shutdown than Georgia's Jon Ossoff.

ATLANTA (AP) — There may be no rank-and-file Democratic senator with more at stake from the federal government shutdown than Georgia’s Jon Ossoff.

He is the party’s only senator who is seeking reelection next year in a state that Republican Donald Trump won in 2024, and any chance that Democrats may have in regaining Senate control depends on Ossoff holding the seat. As the second-longest shutdown in history drags on and Democrats insist on extending expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies beyond year’s end, more people in Georgia than most other states are likely to lose health insurance if the tax credits go away.

Ossoff, like other Democrats, is betting that stand is sound policy and good politics, too.

“Georgians don’t want their health insurance premiums to skyrocket, and they want the federal government reopened,” the first-term senator told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It is in everyone’s interest to achieve those goals.”

Republicans see an opening if they can blame Ossoff and his party for the shutdown and the fallout on Americans.

Two Republican challengers, former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley and U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, held events outside Ossoff’s Atlanta office early in the shutdown, which began Oct. 1; Collins even delivered a symbolic pink slip to fire Ossoff. Meantime, Dooley and a third candidate, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, call it the “Schumer-Ossoff shutdown,” giving Ossoff equal billing with the Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.

Ossoff’s strategy: Focus on people whose health coverage is at risk. On Oct. 8, for example, he released a video with Georgians, including Himali Patel from a hospital bed, speaking directly into a camera. She told the AP on Monday that she goes to an Atlanta hospital at least three days a week to be treated for multiple ailments.

“When you have this many illnesses and you need this much care, having affordable care is extremely important,” Patel said.