Democrats have crowed after Georgia Rep. Mike Collins won the Republican runoff on Tuesday, calling him an “unelectable nepo baby.”
The Associated Press called the result with 59 percent of the votes counted. Collins edged out former football coach Derek Dooley, who was backed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, with just over 55 percent of the vote to 44.8 percent.
Collins, 58, will now face off against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the general election in what is considered one of the most competitive Senate races this fall.
Ossoff, 39, is being touted as an outside chance in the 2028 presidential race and is admired for building a political brand similar to that of former President Barack Obama.
The Democrat, who was first elected in 2020, has been tough on President Trump, calling him a “national embarrassment,” and has been praised for his public speaking.
His history as a documentary filmmaker has made him comfortable on camera for both TV and social media, while Politico reports his public events are staged by Democratic political event producer, strategist Doug Landry, who worked on Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Politico’s senior political columnist Jonathan Martin even noted that the “O” signs at Ossoff’s events “could’ve been recycled from the Obama collection.”
Collins’ win came after Trump offered him an eleventh-hour endorsement after holding off on backing a candidate in the primary despite Collins touting his MAGA credentials repeatedly on the campaign trail.
In his endorsement posted on Truth Social on Monday, Trump called him “‘MAGA’ Mike Collins” who has been with him ”from the very beginning.”
After the win, Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French called Collins an “opposition researcher’s dream.”
French said Collins “treats Congress like a money-making scheme for his family business, an ethics-free zone, and a conspiracy theory clearinghouse—sometimes all in the same week. This unelectable nepo baby doesn’t have what it takes to beat Jon Ossoff.”
Ossoff, meanwhile, had similar views, “Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate Mike Collins is a notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist currently under federal investigation for the illegal misuse of tax dollars. Collins, who is only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman, voted to double health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians, for the Iran War, and for the Trump tariffs.”
Collins has served in the House for less than two terms, having represented Georgia’s 10th congressional district since 2023. The president called him a “WARRIOR and WINNER!”
The MAGA congressman beat Dooley after the outgoing governor, who has had his own volatile relationship with the president at times, chose not to mount his own GOP Senate bid.
But Collins has already faced a series of controversies, including being accused of touting fake campaign endorsements and his campaign social media account posting a now-deleted joke about rape, which resulted in a top aide being fired last month.
A series of polls in the final stretch of the runoff showed Collins with a slight edge, but the race remained competitive as the president withheld his endorsement until the last minute.
Republicans see the Georgia Senate seat as one of their most likely options to flip a seat from blue to red as they fight to hold on to a slim Senate majority in the November midterms.
Ossoff pulled off a surprise victory in the Georgia runoff in January 2021 after neither candidate secured the necessary votes in November 2020 to win the race outright.
In the end, the Georgia Democrat won the seat by just over 55,000 votes over incumbent Sen. David Perdue. But the state flipped back to red in 2024 when it elected Trump for a second term over former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ossoff has made a name for himself with a series of viral clips on the campaign trail in recent months, taking direct aim at Trump, whose approval is deep underwater less than two years into his second term. The 39-year-old’s fiery speeches have even sparked chatter about whether he could be a Democratic contender for president in 2028.
In the meantime, the Georgia Senate matchup is expected to be one of the most expensive of this cycle as both candidates fight to secure support before the November general election.
A series of recent polls of a hypothetical matchup between Ossoff and Collins and Ossoff and Dooley showed the Democratic senator leading, but the margins are likely to shrink now that the GOP nominee has been officially selected.
