The wealthy father of Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff, who has given thousands to his son's campaigns, took a Paycheck Protection Program loan of as much as $1 million as Ossoff argued that the program favors the rich.
Richard Ossoff's Atlanta-based company Strafford Publications, Inc., received between $350,000 and $1 million from the PPP on June 9. The loan saved 30 jobs, according to federal records. PPP was part of the CARES ACT, a federal coronavirus relief bill.
The elder Ossoff, a Harvard Business School graduate and former consultant at McKinsey & Co., founded Strafford in 1984. The company has an estimated $28 million in annual revenue and amassed Ossoff a fortune that allowed him to purchase a private jet in 2014. He has donated $32,100 to Democrats in the 2020 cycle, including $8,400 to his son's Senate campaign, and spent thousands on his son’s failed House campaign in 2017.
Jon Ossoff said in April that the CARES Act did not help people truly in need and ripped PPP for only benefiting wealthy Americans.
"I mean, so much of the support, the overwhelming majority of the support that the federal government is extending right now on emergency basis is for the largest firms, and even the tax benefits in the CARES Act are going to flow overwhelmingly to the highest earners," Ossoff said. "There's no urgency in the government right now about getting emergency relief to ordinary people."
Ossoff's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.