Rep. Mike Collins has won the Republican Senate runoff in Georgia, NBC News projects, setting up a race against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in one of the most competitive and important campaigns in the country.
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Collins' primary victory over former college football coach Derek Dooley is also a win for President Donald Trump, who endorsed Collins just a few days before Tuesday's runoff election. Dooley was endorsed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who campaigned heavily for his candidate and argued the GOP needed a political outsider to defeat Ossoff.
Collins and Dooley met in the runoff after no candidate won a majority of the primary vote on May 19. As Republicans continued to battle for the nomination, Ossoff has been gearing up for a hotly contested race. He is the only Democratic senator running for re-election in a state Trump carried in 2024, and Georgia is a must-win state for Democrats, who are trying for a net gain of four seats to take over the Senate.
Collins, first elected to the House in 2022, has pitched himself as a staunch Trump ally, saying in a recent debate that he is a “conservative workhorse.†And he has already started to lay out his case against Ossoff, who was elected to the Senate in a runoff following the 2020 election.
Ossoff “doesn't represent us, he doesn't reflect our state and represent the people or our values,†Collins said at a rally in Cumming on the eve of the primary runoff. He went on to say Ossoff “has never had a real job in his life†and “is bought and paid for by those crazy folks in California and nutjobs in New York.â€
Ossoff has also begun to make his case against Collins, saying at a recent rally that Collins is “a congressman who's only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman.â€
Collins has been a vocal Trump supporter, often noting on the campaign trail and on the airwaves that he authored the Laken Riley Act, an immigration detention measure that was the first bill Trump signed into law in his second term. The bill was named after a Georgia nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally, and it drew some bipartisan support, including from Ossoff.
Collins represents a deeply Republican district and is an ardent conservative who has stuck close to Trump. Asked after a campaign event last month whether he disagreed with any of Trump's actions in his second term, Collins told NBC News that he disagrees with Trump on the hours of sleep needed to function, noting that Trump does not get much sleep.
“Listen, I ran on Trump policies. I ran on ‘America First.' I know what those policies did and can do for this country and for the people of this country. That's what I'm running with, and he is — I wholeheartedly support what he's been doing,†Collins said.
Asked after his rally Monday night about voters' concerns about high costs and Trump's handling of the economy, Collins suggested the economy would turn around.
“Well, you know, it looks like the Iran deal is done,†he said, referring to an agreement to end the war with Iran, which has contributed to high gas prices.
“The economy is moving,†Collins added later. “Gas prices are too high, but you're going to see them start coming down awful soon.â€
Ossoff also previewed at his rally that he will highlight a House Ethics Committee probe into whether Collins misused congressional funds by paying a former aide for campaign work and by employing the aide's girlfriend, who did not do work for the office. Collins has said the allegations are “bogus.â€
The aide, Collins' former chief of staff Brandon Phillips, was let go from the campaign and his congressional office after he published a disparaging post on behalf of Collins' campaign account on X.
A supporter pressed Collins at his rally Monday about how he plans to respond to issues that had been “all over the ads,†referring to attacks from Dooley and his allies highlighting the ethics probe and Phillips controversies.
“I can win this thing. They can sling whatever they want, you know. I can't help that,†Collins said, adding later that “our real enemy is Jon Ossoff.â€
And although the primary with Dooley had gotten negative, Collins was confident Republicans would unite after the runoff.
“Republicans have always had spirited primaries. We always will. But at the end of the day, you always see that we unite together and we march lockstep, because we all have the same mission,†Collins said. “And that is to make sure that we put a Republican in that U.S. Senate seat.â€
The Georgia Senate race is going to be a tough — and expensive — battle for both parties.
The state has emerged as a closely contested battleground in recent years. Trump won Georgia by just 2 percentage points in 2024. In 2020, Joe Biden won Georgia by less than half a point. Ossoff won his seat in January 2021 by just over 1 point, defeating GOP Sen. David Perdue in a runoff and handing Democrats the Senate majority that year.
The two major super PACs involved in Senate races have already pledged to spend a combined $64 million on the race, and that spending could continue to balloon as the contest heats up.
On the candidate level, Ossoff starts the race with an overwhelming financial advantage. His campaign has raised more than $80 million and had $32 million to spend as of April 29, when he filed his most recent campaign finance report.
Collins, whose campaign had to file a fundraising report more recently because of the runoff, has raised $4.9 million and had $1.2 million in his campaign account as of May 27.
And Ossoff has expressed confidence that he'll win in November, regardless of who his Republican opponent is.
“It doesn't matter which one wins,†Ossoff said at a recent rally, referring to the GOP runoff. “They're both corrupt political insiders, and they're both pro-war, pro-tariff and pro-cutting your healthcare. They're both Trump puppets, and we'll beat either one of them in November.â€
