The Means Report continues to tackle all things political as election day nears. This week they calk with a candidate for senate in Georgia. Jon Ossoff is challenging Senator David Perdue for that Senate seat. Ossoff will talk about his run and his platform, trying to get the economy back on track, what he thinks about health care for all, and what can be done to reduce crime in the country.

Brad Means: Thank you Mr. Ossoff for your time. I know you’re busy on the trail and we appreciate you,

Jon Ossoff: Brad thank you so much for having me and hello to everybody in Augusta.

Brad Means: Listen let me just ask you off the bat. So, people in Augusta and the surrounding area can get to know you a little bit better. When did you decide to run for Senate? Was there a moment that you recall a phone call, a conversation maybe with a family member when you said, I have to do this?

Jon Ossoff: I made the decision last summer, Brad. Of course, before this pandemic struck and our world changed so profoundly. And I think that what led me to make the decision ultimately was the encouragement of Congressman John Lewis for whom I worked many years ago. And who’s been a mentor of mine for the last 17 years. And in the private sector I run a business that produces investigations of political corruption, organized crime and war crimes for news organizations around the world. And I’m passionate about fighting corruption and exposing the abuse of power. And that’s the same passion that propels me now to seek office because the corruption in American politics is out of control and it’s infected both parties. It’s destroyed our political system. It’s why health insurance and drug companies are allowed to write the rules so they can rip off our families. It’s why polluters are allowed to poison our air and our water. It’s why Congress serves narrow private interests who fund political campaigns, instead of the public. And I think we’re at a fork in the road for our country. And I humbly offer my leadership to the people of Augusta and the surrounding areas and the people of the state.

Brad Means: What about the incumbent Senator David Perdue? Do you think he’s doing a bad job overall?

Jon Ossoff: I think Senator Perdue is the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with Washington. I mean, this is a man who sells meetings for corporate PAC checks. He was aggressively trading vaccine and medical stocks early this year while he was telling us that the risk from this virus to our health was low while he was insisting the impact on economic growth would be little, that kind of self-serving, self-dealing corruption is what’s wrong with politics today. It’s not about David Perdue’s political party. It’s about his character, responding to a public health emergency and being honest with the people about threats to our health and prosperity. These are basic functions of government and basic responsibilities of the leaders that we entrust with this kind of power and authority. And he wasn’t level with us about the threats that we face. They drag their feet; they deny what was going on. They sent mixed messages, politicized the response didn’t allow the public health experts to lead. And the emergence of a deadly virus is not the fault of any politician, but that the quality of our government’s response is 100% the responsibility of politicians. The federal government has botched this response. And David Perdue was echoing all the president’s denials the entire time.

Brad Means: Yeah, I was gonna ask you that, we heard reports in recent days about the president possibly downplaying and in his own words saying that he wanted to play it down when it came to the pandemic. So, it was not the cause of panic nationwide. Are you trying to paint David Perdue with that same brush now?

Jon Ossoff: I don’t need to paint David Perdue one way or the other, his own words speak for himself. I mean, just like President Trump, David Perdue was getting briefings on Capitol Hill behind closed doors about the reality of the threat and how dangerous this virus was. But out in public, what he was telling the rest of us was that there was not gonna be a significant uptick in cases that the risk to our health was low. That the impact on economic growth would be little. I mean, Brad, those are his own words. And at the same time to be vigorously adjusting his stock portfolio, dumping his casino, shares buying medical stock. What’s that all about? I mean, we deserve better than this.

Brad Means: Yeah, you don’t think it looks good?

Jon Ossoff: I don’t think it looks good. And I think it’s a betrayal of the people who pay his salary and elect them to office.

Brad Means: Let me ask you–

Jon Ossoff: I mean, let me just put it this way, Brad, if I might, we could even forgive incompetence, but self-dealing in the midst of all this, lining his own pockets while this virus board down on us. And he was telling the rest of us that there was little to worry about that’s deeply wrong.

Brad Means: Senator Perdue’s office would tell you that he’s bent over backwards to make sure that this country gets through this pandemic as best as it can, whether it comes to the paycheck protection program or whether it comes to back to school approaches that different parts of the country can take when it comes to getting kids back in school. You’re not buying it though.

Jon Ossoff: Well, let’s talk about school reopening. ‘Cause I mean, this is what they always do in Washington, Brad, they don’t plan ahead. They don’t take responsibility. And rather than listening to medical experts and public health experts and educators about what was necessary, they dragged their feet all along. I mean, schools have been reopening in Georgia for the last four to six weeks without federal support. It’s not like it was a mystery that public school was we’re gonna need help. Local school districts are gonna need help in order to, meet CDC guidelines and protect children and teachers and families when they returned to in person learning, that was self-evident back in the spring and early summer, they still haven’t passed any help for our schools.

Brad Means: Let me jump.

Jon Ossoff: So yeah, go ahead.

Brad Means: I didn’t mean to cut you off. I looked at the clock just now and started to kind of mildly panic. I wanna make sure I get to as many questions as I can. And I probably don’t need to ask you this question now, just based on what I’ve been hearing so far, do you mind negative ads? Is the question, do you think negative ads work? And I’ve asked every candidate I’ve had on my show that same question gotten some different answers. Are they powerful? Can negative ads change people’s minds?

Jon Ossoff: Well, look, I think that politics has become so nasty and it’s down in the gutter and there’s so much misinformation. I think that what candidates ought to do is present their positive vision for our state and our country. And then if there is legitimate criticism of one’s opponent, then that’s fair game. I mean, the people of this state need to know that David Perdue didn’t just lie to us about the real scope of the threat of this virus, but he was also working to enrich himself at the same time, but where we have to draw the line is when ads become blatantly false. And Senator Perdue has been running these ads about his positions on healthcare, about how he supports protections for preexisting conditions like cancer and asthma and diabetes and high blood pressure. When he voted to repeal those protections, he voted to allow health insurance companies to deny us coverage if we’re already sick and you cannot show it to your audience. I mean, don’t take it from me, but independent fact checkers overruled that his ads have simply been false. So, I think what we expect from our leaders is honesty. And look, I don’t wanna spend this whole conversation talking about Senator Perdue. I don’t think he’s done a good job. I think his record is one of widespread disease unemployment. I don’t think he deserves to be reelected, but what we need to talk about is how we’re going to rebuild this economy.

Brad Means: We will get to it and throw this and let me throw this in real quick, just in all fairness, Senator Perdue’s office said that he supports coverage for people with preexisting conditions, period. Anybody who suggests otherwise is lying. He also says that fact-check website cherry picked part of a comment and turned it into something that it was not. I’m not gonna ask you if you’re lying because you don’t buy into that’ because I know your answer is no, you’re not. Let’s do move on though. And let’s do talk about other things. What do you think about the way Georgia governor Brian Kemp has handled the pandemic? One of the first leaders in the country to reopen his state, your thoughts on that and how it’s gone ever since?

Jon Ossoff: Well, I think that at all levels of government, what we’ve needed is political leaders who recognize the limitations of their own knowledge and listen to medical experts and scientists and public health experts during a public health emergency. And we haven’t seen that at the federal level. We haven’t seen it at the state level. We’ve seen a politicized response. And so, what I encourage governor Kemp to do and what I encourage local leaders and what the federal government needs to be doing is listening to the medical experts. This got out of control unnecessarily. It didn’t have to be this way. And the unchecked spread of this virus has deepened the economic damage that’s resulted from this pandemic. The path forward to recovery is pretty clear. We empower medical experts and trust their advice on the public health response. We need a significant infrastructure and jobs program to get people back to work and invest in economic recovery. And then we need tax relief and more direct relief for working families and small businesses instead of prioritizing bailouts for the most powerful lobbying groups in DC.

Brad Means: Tax relief look like real quickly before we go to break, does it impact all of us, do we all have bigger paycheck?

Jon Ossoff: I will fight in the Senate to cut taxes for working and middle class families and small businesses, period. That’s vital to the economic recovery and that needs to be paired with a historic American infrastructure program with investments in transit and transportation, clean energy research and development. We can upgrade our quality of life. We can create tens of thousands of jobs across Georgia, and we can protect our planet for future generations. And this is the kinda thing I think that can really, need healing when I feel. And I don’t know if you feel this way, Brad, but I feel like we’re losing sight of the fact that we’re all Americans. We’re so focused on our differences on our political differences. And this is a moment that challenges us to come together. That’s the way that this country has overcome great challenges throughout our history is with a unity and a historic infrastructure program is something that can bring the people of our state and our country together with a vision for how we move forward from here.

Brad Means: When we come back, our conversation with John Ossoff continues here on The Means Report. We’ll continue to tackle the headlines of the day from a political perspective, the Means Report back in a moment.

Part 2

Brad Means: Welcome back to The Means Report. Our conversation with John Ossoff continues. He is the democratic candidate for one of George’s Senate seats, challenging incumbent David Perdue. Mr. Ossoff in our first segment, you mentioned the need to listen to our healthcare leaders and heed their advice as our reopening continues. What about those frontline workers in our hospitals, from where you stand, are they getting everything they need right now?

Jon Ossoff: No, I think our doctors and nurses have been hung out to dry by the federal government, which is failed in this pandemic response. I mean, my wife is a OBGYN doc, mostly working at Grady Hospital here in Atlanta. And luckily Georgia has great hospital administrators and healthcare professionals here at home, but they weren’t getting what they needed from the federal government. There was these huge PPE shortages right off the bat, all kinds of mixed messages and even more important than that, the fact that the federal government botched the pandemic response and let this virus spiral out of control is why the burden on our hospital systems and on our healthcare workers has been so much more serious and so much more dangerous than has been necessary. But look I… I think that Georgia’s doctors and nurses are the heroes. One of the things that I wanna do to make sure every Georgian has access to great healthcare is expand the U S public health service so that we can recruit and train and deploy more highly qualified healthcare professionals who can go out into underserved communities in rural areas in Georgia, where there’s a real shortage of doctors and provide preventative healthcare services, urgent care, pediatric care, mental health services, addiction treatment. We need to build more clinics to serve areas of our state, where we’ve seen these rural hospital closures. We need to expand Medicaid to make healthcare more affordable. We need to crack down on price gouging by pharmaceutical companies. I mean, we’re getting ripped off left, right and center folks are having to choose between making the house payment or the rent and affording the medicine they need. And it just doesn’t have to be that way. So, there’s a lot of work that we can do to make healthcare affordable and accessible for everyone in Augusta and the surrounding areas and across our state.

Brad Means: Let me do this real quick and you just try to answer as succinctly as possible regarding the pandemic. This is uncharted territory. We’ve never had a pandemic in our lifetime like this before. What are two or three things, one or two things you would have done differently? Heck I was thinking about Augusta’s mayor. He shut this city down in early March to try to protect it. You had travel from nations all the world limited or restricted early on. What would you have done differently to make where we stand now better?

Jon Ossoff: Well, first of all, informed the public transparently about the nature of the threat and best practices to combat it rather than downplaying it and trying to tell everyone that everything was fine when it wasn’t fine. Two, much swifter action would have reduced the necessity of those long shelter in place orders, which did so much economic damage. A virus is something that spreads exponentially. You need to nip it in the bud. And if we hadn’t spent those weeks delaying and denying and sending mixed signals, then we could have acted much more swiftly stemmed the spread of this thing and reduced the economic damage. And finally, the economic response has left small businesses and working families hung out to dry while vast sums of money have flowed the most powerful corporations and lobbying groups in the country. I mean the Senate went on vacation for five weeks during which time the PPP program expired during which time the emergency unemployment benefits expired. I mean, Brad and I think folks at home will know this. If Goldman Sachs stock valuation had started plummeting, the Senate would have been back in session overnight to rescue the banking system. And of course, the health of our banking system matters, but there are families and businesses facing dire economic circumstances, and Congress has been on vacation. And that gets back to the fundamental point here, which is that the corruption in our political system means that politicians aren’t looking out for the general public, they’re looking out for their donors.

Brad Means: Let me ask you about our children. I sent my senior in high school back for his first day today. And I looked at the numbers at his high school, half the kids are learning virtually half are in the schoolhouse. How do you feel about the way that our children are being sent back to school across this state? Do you think it’s too soon and what would you do if elected to help our kids and our education system?

Jon Ossoff: Well, Congress should have been sending emergency help to local school districts in June and July to assist in the planning and preparation so that reopening could be done in an orderly way so that schools would have all the equipment and training that they needed to meet CDC public health guidelines, or to engage more fruitfully in remote learning where necessary. I mean, this is just another great example of Congress not planning ahead, not attending to the needs of people here at home that it’s now well into September and Congress still hasn’t passed emergency support for our schools. So the federal government, is the only entity with the resources to step in and rush emergency support to local school districts. And that should have happened months ago and it was obvious it needed to happen, but they didn’t get it done.

Brad Means: Let’s take a look at the upcoming election. We just had a story on the news. I think it was last night, maybe night before about this double voting business in Georgia. I’m sure you’ve heard of it about a thousand people voted absentee and then marched up to the polls and voted in person did not affect the outcome of any primary or runoff we’re told. Do you trust our voting system? Do you trust the mail in system so that after November, we really know if you or David Perdue and everybody else won?

Jon Ossoff: Well, look here’s my message for folks at home about the upcoming election and how to vote. Obviously, the voting infrastructure is under stress because polling places are having to meet social distancing requirements. And because there’s been some draconian cuts to the us postal service, but folks should have confidence in the voting infrastructure. They just need to take responsibility for doing their due diligence. Make sure you cross those Ts and dot those Is when you’re filling out your absentee ballot, diligently check on the secretary of state’s website to monitor its progress. If you’re voting early, please note this date, October 12th, October 12th, October 12th is the first date of early voting here in Georgia. And we should all do our part to keep those lines down by voting early and on the early side of the early voting period. So, we don’t have that kind of congestion toward the end of early voting and on election day. And look, I to be very candid with you, Brad, I’m disgusted by the way that elections have been administered in Georgia, that folks have to wait four to six, eight hours just to cast their ballots. Folks shouldn’t have to wait 45 minutes to participate in our democracy. This is just a basic function of government, but I’m also so impressed by the commitment of the people of this state to cast their ballots. And let me just add this final point on voting Brad, we need a new voting rights act in this country because there is no doubt that there are some officials who abuse their power to disenfranchise their own citizens, to make it harder to vote. And that’s not right. We need a new voting rights act to protect the voting rights of every single citizen to ensure that voter suppression is never permitted. And to make sure that everyone has access to the ballot who an eligible voter.

Brad Means: Some people are worried though, Mr. Ossoff that you know you mail in your ballot and somebody’s gonna lose it or steal it. Is that unrealistic?

Jon Ossoff: I think folks should have confidence in voting by mail and should do their due diligence and check on the secretary of state’s website on the progress of their ballot. And look, I also encourage folks to vote early in person, October 12th is the first day of early voting. And it’s time now to make a plan to, if you do plan to vote by mail, go ahead and request that ballot now, don’t wait. I think that’s the most important thing is make the plan now, if you wanna vote by mail, go ahead and request that ballot. If you prefer to vote in person, then vote on the early side of the early vote, October 12th is when it begins rather than thinking about November 3rd as election day. Think of it as the last possible opportunity to vote, make a plan to vote before November 3rd.

Brad Means: Last question, is just to get you to tell us what your plans are here for this home stretch. You’re in an extremely tight race. If you believe the polls and a lot of people do, how are you gonna handle these last few weeks as we get closer to the end?

Jon Ossoff: Look, my plan is to humbly and candidly communicate my vision for the representation of this state, to people in every community across the state, in Augusta and the surrounding areas and every part of Georgia. And the plan is pretty simple. First of all, we’ve got to get the cost of healthcare under control. Crack down on price gouging by drug and insurance companies. Expand Medicaid, invest in health care access in places where there’s a shortage of healthcare workers and healthcare facilities. Second, we’ve got to get this economy moving again and get people back to work. And that means that historic infrastructure and clean energy program. We can unite people behind a vision like that. We can invest in our future. We can create tens of thousands of jobs, upgrade our infrastructure and protect our planet. And finally, we’ve got to reform our corrupt campaign finance system. There’s a reason that Congress was cutting unemployment insurance while they print money for wall street during this crisis, there’s a reason that insurance and drug companies are allowed to rip off our families. There’s a reason that they have tax incentives to outsource American jobs. It’s about corruption. It’s not a partisan issue. It’s a systemic problem. We’ve got to be honest about that. And I will fight to get corporate money and secret money out of our political system so that government serves the people and not narrow private interests who buy access to politicians.

Brad Means: John Ossoff, candidate for Senate in Georgia on the democratic side of the ticket, thank you for your time today. Be safe on the campaign trail, be healthy, and please tell your bride, thank you for her service in the healthcare field.

Jon Ossoff: Thank you so much, Brad anytime and best wishes and good health to everybody at home.

Brad Means: Thank you so much, John Ossoff, our special guest.