As the government shutdown stretches into its third week, the political spotlight in Washington has landed squarely on Georgia’s junior senator, Jon Ossoff. At just 38 years old, Ossoff is the most vulnerable Senate Democrat facing re-election in 2026—a reality made all the more precarious by the fact that more than 81,000 federal workers in his home state are now at risk of furloughs and firings. Yet, despite mounting pressure, Ossoff is holding fast to his party’s playbook, framing the budget standoff not simply as a battle over spending, but as a fight for the future of health care in America.
According to reporting by POLITICO, Ossoff’s decision to toe the Democratic line, rather than break ranks in hopes of appealing to swing voters, is both calculated and emblematic of a broader political gamble. The party’s strategy is to reframe the shutdown as a struggle to preserve health insurance subsidies that are set to expire—a message that resonates with the more than 20 million Americans, including an estimated 1.4 million Georgians, who stand to see their premiums double if Congress doesn’t act.
“What Americans are trying to get their heads around,” Ossoff told reporters this week, “is, with health insurance premiums set to double for more than 20 million Americans and the federal government shut down, why the U.S. House of Representatives is shut down this week.” His comments echo the Democratic Party’s main talking point: that they are fighting to protect Americans’ health care benefits, even as the government grinds to a halt.
This approach marks a notable departure from the traditional swing-state Democrat’s playbook, which often involves tacking to the center to court moderate voters. Instead, Ossoff has positioned himself in lockstep with party leadership, opposing the GOP-led stopgap funding bill in March and supporting calls to impeach Donald Trump earlier this year. As of September, he had voted with Trump just 8 percent of the time, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Meanwhile, other Democrats in so-called purple states have taken a different tack. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania both voted with Republicans to pass a House-approved bill that would have ended the shutdown. Their decisions highlight the delicate balancing act facing lawmakers in competitive states, where the calculus often involves weighing the risks of alienating the party base against the potential rewards of appealing to independents.
Yet, as several Republican senators have pointed out, the political fallout from the shutdown may not be as significant as some believe. “It just doesn’t stick,” Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told POLITICO. “I think every year the attention span of the American people gets shorter and shorter.” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina went even further, noting that Republicans actually gained seats in the midterms following the 2013 shutdown they themselves instigated. “Nobody is going to be paying attention to the shutdown next November,” Tillis remarked.
Still, the stakes are high for Ossoff. Republican campaign operatives have long viewed him as a prime target for the 2026 midterm map, especially after his razor-thin victory over David Perdue in the 2021 runoff—a race that wasn’t decided until the morning of January 6, just hours before the Capitol riot. That contest, along with Raphael Warnock’s win over Kelly Loeffler, remains a sore spot for the GOP, who blame internal divisions and doubts cast by Trump on mail-in voting for their losses.
Now, with a crowded Republican primary field jockeying for position, the attacks on Ossoff have only intensified. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has been circulating lists of federal services that have been paused in Georgia and running digital ads accusing Ossoff of “knowingly hurting Georgia’s small businesses and ripping away critical government services from Georgia veterans, farmers, and families all because he wants to give free healthcare to illegal aliens and appease his far-left supporters in California,” as NRSC spokesperson Nick Puglia put it.
At least one Republican candidate, Representative Mike Collins, has already launched digital ads targeting Ossoff over the shutdown. The GOP is betting that a Trump endorsement will eventually unify the base and make Ossoff a one-term senator. But Ossoff, for his part, is hardly caught off guard. He’s spent years preparing for a tough re-election battle, billing himself as “MAGA’s #1 target” in fundraising appeals and shoring up support among Democratic loyalists. His campaign recently announced it had raised $12 million in the latest quarter, bringing his war chest to a formidable $21 million as of early October—an indication that both parties are likely to pour tens of millions into what may be one of the most expensive Senate races in the country.
Health care, however, remains the central battleground. The expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which more than 20 million Americans rely on, looms large. The issue is especially acute in Georgia, where Ossoff and other Democrats have seized on the potential impact of the GOP’s new domestic policy law, enacted in July, which slashes Medicaid funding for rural hospitals—cuts that are only partially offset by a new fund. During a recent event in his home state, Ossoff voiced concerns about how these changes could devastate already-struggling rural health providers.
Interestingly, Democrats have found an unlikely ally in Georgia’s own Republican firebrand, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. This month, Greene emerged as a vocal advocate for her party to address the expiring ACA subsidies, a move that Democrats have seized on as evidence that even staunch conservatives recognize the political danger of rising insurance premiums. “Why would Marjorie Taylor Greene go out so strong on that issue? She’s in Georgia, and I think Georgia was getting some of the first notices,” observed Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. “I think Georgians are seeing at the front end how bad it’s going to be.”
The broader context is equally fraught. According to POLITICO, Republicans have tried more than 70 times in the past 15 years to weaken or repeal the Affordable Care Act, often with limited success. But a sweeping tax and spending bill signed by President Trump this summer has unraveled much of the law, and is expected to eventually push millions of Americans who gained insurance under the ACA off the rolls.
As the shutdown drags on, the debate over health care is only intensifying. Both parties are betting that voters will remember—come November 2026—not the minutiae of legislative standoffs, but who fought for their access to affordable coverage. For Ossoff, the path forward is clear: keep the focus on health care, rally the base, and hope that the political winds, and perhaps even the attention span of the electorate, will favor his cause when it matters most.