Jon Ossoff's makeup tab continues to mount heading into the midterms. The Democratic senator from Georgia paid his favorite Hollywood makeup artist $1,749 in July, according to his latest campaign financial disclosure. Ossoff has now paid Atlanta-based freelancer Stephanie Ponder, whose film credits include The Notebook and The Hunger Games, more than $4,600 since February.
Rather interestingly, Ossoff appears to have taken steps to obscure his glamour expenditures, the coy fox. As the Washington Free Beacon reported in July, the Ossoff campaign paid Ponder $2,887 for "makeup services" in the first half of the year. That was considerably more than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) spent on makeup during that period.
The campaign's most recent payment to Ponder, however, is listed under "event production," which raises all sorts of questions about what else Ossoff might be hiding as he eyes a potential White House run in 2028.
Ponder is an experienced artist who offers "services for all phases of Makeup: Film, Video, Print, Runway," according to an online advertisement that also lists her affiliation with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. There's no evidence that she has ever "produced" an "event" professionally.
On the same day Ponder received her payment in July, Ossoff's campaign doled out $1,488 to Eventeny, an online event-management platform. (Context: 1488 is a widely recognized neo-Nazi code used to express allegiance to Adolf Hitler and white supremacy.)
Ossoff is still far outpacing Ocasio-Cortez in terms of spending on his beauty regimen. In her latest financial disclosure, the New York congresswoman listed a single payment of $500 for "campaign event hair services" on August 19 in Tennessee. That brings her total spending on hair and makeup services to $2,338 for the year—roughly half of Ossoff's reported total.
It's worth noting that AOC's description of the August payment was consistent with prior expenditures, which raises still more questions about why Ossoff paid a highly regarded Hollywood makeup artist nearly $2,000 for "event production."
Among Democratic politicians, Ossoff is something of a pioneer in the art of "looksmaxxing." Journalists and other liberal activists are perhaps even more entranced by his (relative) aesthetic prowess than they were by Beto O'Rourke in 2018. A Puck profile published earlier this year commended Ossoff for adding a "beefier physique to his studied, Obama-like cadence." MS NOW host Chris Hayes, channeling our current president, hailed the dreamboat Democrat as a "very conventionally handsome" young man who "could be in a movie."
Perhaps most impressively, Ossoff has managed to achieve this transformation without relying on the vast quantities of grease that Gavin Newsom, a potential White House rival, requires to maintain his glossy exterior.
