It’s TV debate time at Manuel’s Tavern, an Atlanta landmark that has hosted Democratic heavyweights for six decades, and the patrons are glued to the screens as Georgia’s incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff trades barbs with his Republican challenger, Mike Collins, in the second and final debate before the November 3 midterms. The Republican contender this time is more biting and sharp after his lacklustre performance in the first debate. But the crowd here appears unimpressed.
Between sips of beer and bites of burgers, they follow the political slugfest impassively. This is a Democratic watering hole, and their candidate, Ossoff, is leading in the polls. They’re also familiar with their senator’s special talent for getting under the skin of his opponents.
At Manuel’s Tavern, they appear to know how the show will unfold. Patrons at Atlanta's Manuel's Tavern watch the October 13, 2026 TV debate between Senator Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger Mike Collins. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24 Collins starts the debate with an opening salvo. Ossoff, looking unfazed, declares he intends to keep his opponent on the defensive for the next hour.
Watch moreGeorgia's Ossof-Collins showdown lies at the heart of the battle for US Senate Nearly two years after Trump was elected to a second presidential term, Ossoff is at the centre of Democratic hopes to take back the White House in the 2028 presidential election. For many Trump critics, the opposition dream of regaining the executive reins and rolling back some of the current president’s most egregious policies rests on Ossoff, the fearless, articulate, handsome, young Democratic “Star of the South”. At his final debate, Ossoff once again denied having presidential aspirations and reasserted his commitment to his Georgia constituency.
But analysts are not willing to write off an Ossoff run for White House in the future. Georgia, they note, has previously given the country a Democratic president. Like Ossoff, he was a man not just of the South, but of America’s “Deep South”, the subregion of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, that has a distinct historic and cultural identity.
Fifty years ago, when Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia senator and governor, was elected 39 th president of the United States, he was hailed as a product of a changing "Deep South". Carter’s death at the ripe old age of 100 sparked an intense examination of his legacy on the country. It’s a heritage that lives on at Manuel’s Tavern, where the walls host a virtual museum of photographs, paintings, memorabilia and mementos to Carter, Georgia’s “son of the South”.
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