Investigative filmmaker Jon Ossoff, the leading Democrat in the April 18 special election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, announced on Wednesday evening that he’d raised a brain-blistering, eye-exploding, mind-smashing $8.3 million for his upstart campaign. According to Ossoff’s campaign, that’s the most money ever raised in a single quarter by a House candidate who didn't self-fund.
Making that number even more stunning, here’s another: Ossoff’s haul came from an insanely massive 195,684 donors, meaning the average donation was a decidedly people-powered $42.52. That, my friends, is what we call a true grassroots campaign.
And the Daily Kos community—you guys—were instrumental in bringing this about. Daily Kos endorsed Ossoff in late January, just a few weeks after he entered the race, making us the first major progressive organization to do so. And you responded like wildfire, contributing over $400,000 to Ossoff in just a single week.
That smashed our all-time record—held by Elizabeth Warren, maybe you’ve heard of her?—and it also had another huge impact on the race: It demonstrated that Ossoff was for real, generating a major wave of media coverage. In turn, that helped Ossoff raise even more money, win more endorsements, and earn more attention from the press, kicking off a positive feedback loop of the very best sort. Ultimately, it resulted it the extraordinary numbers reported just above, including an amazing $1.3 million from Daily Kos readers.
Thanks to this intense outpouring of support, Ossoff’s made it clear that he’s going to try to go for a knockout on April 18. If he can win an outright majority, then he’ll avoid a June runoff and send all 11 Republican candidates home crying. And his campaign’s spending backs up this big talk: Ossoff has already shelled out $6.2 million, showing that he wants to leave it all on the field.
But there’s still a long way to go between now and the election. For all of the passion and excitement surrounding Ossoff’s campaign, this is still a very Republican district that’s never before elected a Democrat, and we can’t lose sight of that. Polls have shown Ossoff in the low 40s, meaning he still has a ways to go before he can hit that magic number of 50 percent.
So we’re not going to pause and catch our breaths—not for a second—and we aren’t going to get distracted. We’re going to stay laser-focused on this race and keep raising money for Ossoff, and we’re going to continue directing volunteers his way, too.
We know we’ve already asked you to dig deep many times, and boy have you ever. But we're going to ask again. So if you’d like to volunteer for Ossoff’s campaign, no matter where you live, please click here right now.
And please give $3 to Jon Ossoff so that he can finish strong and win on April 18.
