CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript Interview with Jon Ossoff

Interview

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WHITFIELD: Let's bring in Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia. Jon, good to see you. You have a very special relationship with the congressman as well. And there are very few people who are able to say he not only endorses me in my run, but he is going to appear in ads advocating for me, and I am carrying the baton. Tell me what that has been like for you, and what this day is now like for you upon his passing?

JON OSSOFF, (D) GEORGIA CANDIDATE FOR SENATE: Well, like so many, I've been grieving, since I got the news last night, and you know, deeper than the loss of the political supporter. It's the loss of someone who has been a mentor, who has been a spiritual guide, who in times like these of great confusion and unrest, you can always count on as a steady voice and a moral compass.

I think that John Lewis was called the conscience of the Congress for a great reason. He had that steadfast moral compass. And he oriented us all with his leadership. He was someone that I could always call if I was struggling with a personal matter or struggling with something in public life, and immediately feel that his clarity of purpose and the way that he viewed the world through a prism of love and compassion. His legacy is immortal, though he may be gone. And I know he will continue to guide us with his words and with all that he has done in his life. WHITFIELD: You've said that you read Congressman Lewis's memoir

"Walking with the Wind" for the first time when you were just 16 years old. And you then wrote him a letter and ended up spending time in his office after he received your letter. And it's such an interesting parallel to the letter that he would write Dr. King when he was just 15 years old and then they would be forever friends. So how did Congressman Lewis, besides his book inspiring you, but how has this relationship now shaped your career in politics?

OSSOFF: Well, I wrote him that letter with no expectation even of a reply, and he not only replied, he invited me to come and work for him. And I was just a kid, and this was this great man with all of these important responsibilities. But he took me under his wing. And it wasn't just that brief time I worked in his office. He has taken me under his wing and been a constant guide and a friend ever since.

And I remember him taking time out of his busy schedule to sit down and have lunch with me as a young Jewish kid working in his office. He told me the stories of how rabbis and Jewish activists had marched alongside him in Selma and through the south during the Civil Rights movement. And we discussed what it meant to bring communities together. We discussed his vision and his ideal of the beloved community that he and Dr. King had championed. We learned about how he taught the principles of nonviolence in church basements at a time when they were all working at risk of death. He had his skull fractured marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for voting rights.

And amidst this grief, what I try to summon is to hear his voice and what he would say to all of us now, which is to get on with the work that must be done, to carry forward that legacy and the inspiration that he continues to provide, because he and his colleagues from that era achieved great things, and they achieved greatness, but the struggle continues.

WHITFIELD: It does indeed. Jon Ossoff, thank you so much, thanks for sharing your members of your relationship with the late Congressman John Lewis.

OSSOFF: Thank you, Fredricka. Have a good one.

WHITFIELD: Thank you.

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