Jon Ossoff dealt Trump a huge blow. Now, the half-Australian senator could be the next US president

Half-Australian US Senator Jon Ossoff sealed victory in less than an hour in the midterm elections, dealing Donald Trump a devastating blow.

“The American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame duck president Donald J Trump,” Ossoff told supporters in his victory speech.

"Together, we’ve affirmed that our task is not just to contain one president’s wickedness, but to heal the brokenness beneath."

The young and charismatic senator from Georgia – whose family hailed from Queensland, NSW and Victoria – is one of the brightest rising stars in the Democratic Party.

At 39, he's America's youngest sitting senator and is generating plenty of buzz.

While his political future is wrapped in stars and stripes, his roots are unmistakably Australian.

His mother, Heather Fenton, was born and raised in Sydney before she moved to the US as a 23-year-old and met her husband, Richard Ossoff.

“My grandma, my nana is from Brisbane, my grandfather from Footscray,” Ossoff told a TMZ reporter in August.

Ossoff even held Australian citizenship, which he's since renounced, but he hasn't forgotten the taste of home.

“I grew up eating vegemite,” he told TMZ.

“Vegemite is a little bit of an acquired taste, but there is a laid-back culture in Australia. We get a little bit wound-up sometimes over here.”

The 39-year-old’s name is being floated as a serious presidential contender for 2028. But if you ask the newly re-elected Georgia senator, he insists he’s focused on his day job.

“I have zero interest in running for president,” he said. “I’m not running for president.”

Barack Obama’s former campaign manager Jim Messina isn’t buying it, though.

“I think Barack Obama said something similar,” Messina said in comparing Ossoff’s denials to Obama’s. Indeed, 22 years ago, a young senator from Illinois had that very same spark.

In a state that was once considered reliably Republican, Ossoff has now won two gruelling campaigns – his first in 2021 at the age of 33, when he became the youngest person to be elected to the senate in 41 years.

The battle for the senate in Georgia was expected to be a nail-bitter but in the end, Ossoff won comfortably with 59 per cent of the vote, compared to his Republican challenger Mike Collins who got 41 per cent.

While Ossoff was the incumbent at the ballot, his re-election carries significant weight politically, after his dominant double-digit victory in the crucial swing state.

Unsurprisingly, Trump is not a fan of his and labelled him a “Pee-wee Herman lookalike”.

“Georgia is a state that believes in common sense, and yet your terrible senator Jon Ossoff is terrible,” Trump said at a Georgia campaign rally.

There's no doubt the boy-wonder of the peach state has put himself on the map.

And if he does make it all the way to the Oval Office, for the first time in history, the West Wing would have a touch of red, white and true blue.

Ossoff's aggressive approach against Trump became a model

Ossoff was first elected in 2020, defeating Republican Senator David Perdue in a runoff held the day before Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol with hopes of stopping Democrat Joe Biden’s certification as president-elect.

Ossoff’s fellow Democrat, Senator Raphael Warnock, won a special election at the same time, both breaking historical barriers: Warnock as Georgia’s first Black senator, Ossoff as its first Jewish senator.

Still, Ossoff’s unabashedly aggressive approach initially struck some Democrats as a gamble. It quickly became a model, with Ossoff holding carefully produced rallies where he delivered his withering critiques of the president as young aides quickly cut video clips that were distributed online in real time.

Ossoff mocked “Prince Don Jr”, Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s sons and son-in-law, for their international business deals. The senator called for ending the Iran war, rolling back many of Trump’s tax cuts, and blasted the president’s tariffs.

He highlighted his stalled legislative proposal to bar members of Congress from trading individual stocks and pitched a constitutional amendment to limit corporate money in campaigns.

The senator also carefully navigated the politics of Israel, saying he values Israel’s security and “the lives of innocent Palestinians”. He has voted for some US military aid to Israel and against other munitions grants.

Ossoff said the Israeli military has violated international standards of warfare in Gaza but avoided the question of whether Israel is committing genocide – a charge levied by some on the Democrats’ left flank. Ossoff said that’s a matter for the International Criminal Court to decide.

Ossoff also leveraged the work he’s done for constituents in Georgia, earning endorsements from some local Republican officials in the historically conservative state who said he’s been an effective advocate for hurricane relief, infrastructure investments and other federal funding.

“This is what small men like Donald Trump and Mike Collins will never understand,” Ossoff said as he campaigned, “that our national greatness flows not through our blood or our genes, but through our ideas and our aspirations and our care for one another.”

- Reported with Associated Press.