The Trump candidate who could cost Republicans Georgia

The Trump candidate who could cost Republicans Georgia

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Donald Trump has praised his pick for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat as a warrior and a winner. 

The winning part of that may not hold up to the scrutiny that voters are set to dispense in the fall. 

The president endorsed Rep. Mike Collins just days before Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff, positioning the conservative congressman as the party favorite to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff this fall. But within the Republican Party, that endorsement has landed with a clear sense of dread.

“If you went to a laboratory and tried to create the worst general election candidate for this state and environment possible, you couldn’t do better than Mike Collins,” a prominent Georgia Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told MS NOW. “He has a ton of personal baggage and won’t be able to raise money. He possesses the unique ability to offend female voters with that personal baggage but also with the hardest right abortion stance you can have. He will lose the Atlanta metro in unprecedented fashion, and we have to hope he doesn’t take everyone else down with him.” 

Collins, who has falsely claimed Trump won Georgia in the 2020 election, is the kind of  candidate the president tends to favor: a base-friendly ally likely to back the president’s agenda in Washington time and again. 

During an earlier congressional run, he expressed support in a questionnaire for banning abortion without any exceptions. His campaign now points to more recent comments in which the congressman embraces the state’s so-called heartbeat law, which includes exceptions under which the procedure can still be performed. But the turning point on that stance speaks to just how much of a challenge moderating someone with Collins’ conservative streak may be statewide. 

The anxiety reflects a broader reckoning within Georgia’s Republican Party. Over the past eight years, the once reliably red state has shifted firmly into battleground territory, with the GOP losing three straight Senate contests in races in which Trump’s influence played a significant role.

Trump’s falsehoods and lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him overtook the January 2021 runoffs for two U.S. Senate seats, in which two Republican incumbents lost their seats and Democrats captured the Senate majority for the first two years of Joe Biden’s term in the White House. Trump’s ardent support of former football star Herschel Walker’s Senate run in 2022 ended with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock holding onto his seat despite a favorable national environment for Republicans. 

And even though Trump won the state in 2024, recent federal campaign finance filings show Ossoff with a roughly $30 million-plus advantage in cash on hand over either of his GOP competitors. 

“Jon Ossoff is able to shore up his base, he’s able to stockpile a bunch of cash, and coming out of this runoff, Ossoff is going to be in a position to start talking to persuasion and swing voters,” a national Senate GOP strategist said. “Whoever the Republican candidate ends up being is going to have to sort of re-repair his base coalitions just to shore up Republican voters before he’s going to be able to even go after swing voters.”

Republicans’ choices on Tuesday are either Collins or Derek Dooley, the former football coach whose campaign has been buoyed by the support of Gov. Brian Kemp. Despite the governor’s backing, Collins led by 10 points in the May 19 primary and ultimately received Trump’s endorsement.

In a Truth Social post last weekend, Trump said, “Mike is strongly supported by the most Highly Respected MAGA Patriots in Georgia and beyond.” He also labeled Ossoff “a Radical Left Lunatic, a Dumocrat, and doesn’t represent the values of the Great People of Georgia.” 

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In the same post, Trump wrote, “I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else,” before once again pushing the lie that his presidential campaign won the state in 2020. Despite sharing admiration for Trump, Dooley responded to the endorsement by countering on social media that “a vote for Mike Collins is a vote for Jon Ossoff.” 

Even before Trump’s runoff endorsement, Collins appeared well positioned to make it to November despite an Office of Congressional Conduct probe into his office’s potential misuse of resources that the Republican has referred to as a “nothing burger.” His social media tone, which includes severely downplaying the U.S. Capitol attack where pro-Trump rioters injured law enforcement, gives credence to the president’s view of him as a “a true Friend, Fighter, and WARRIOR.” It also spotlights a few of the ample vulnerabilities for a statewide candidate coming from a reliably red congressional district. 

The worries are compounded by the bigger picture: Democrats now have a plausible route to retake the Senate in November, even though they will need the races to go almost perfectly to reclaim the majority. That once seemed far-fetched, but a clearer path has emerged in recent months as competitive races have opened up across presidential battlegrounds and more right-leaning states scattered around the country. Holding Georgia would be practically essential to any such scenario — and Ossoff’s standing gives him a significant early advantage in making that case.

Ossoff’s own political rise has been unlikely. He lost a close 2017 special election for a House seat, then ran for Senate in 2020, trailing Republican incumbent David Perdue when the votes were counted in November. But because neither candidate crossed the majority threshold, the race went to a runoff — and Ossoff won. 

American politics, especially in the Trump era, can change quickly, however, and there is still plenty of time for momentum to shift before November, especially in a place with vast national influence like Georgia. 

This race, like so many others over the past decade, has many forces in the mix. But no matter who is on the ballot, it all ties back to the man in the White House. For the Republicans in Georgia, Trump is the presence they covet and concern themselves with. And for the Democrats, he is the throughline for what they see as ailing the nation. 

That was true six years ago, and it remains true now. And it may be what matters again — more than anything else — come November. 

“He’s a failed president and a national disgrace,” Ossoff said at a recent rally.

Nnamdi Egwuonwu contributed reporting to this article

Hunter Woodall

Hunter Woodall covers politics for MS NOW. He’s reported on politics and presidential campaigns for The Associated Press and CBS News and reported on Congress for The Minnesota Star Tribune.

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