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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collins\u2019 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cconservative workhorse.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ossoff \u201cdoesn\u2019t represent us, he doesn\u2019t reflect our state and represent the people or our values,\u201d Collins said at a rally in Cumming on the eve of the primary runoff. He went on to say Ossoff \u201chas never had a real job in his life\u201d and \u201cis bought and paid for by those crazy folks in California and nutjobs in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ossoff has also begun to make his case against Collins, saying at a recent rally that Collins is \u201ca congressman who\u2019s only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cListen, I ran on Trump policies. I ran on \u2018America First.\u2019 I know what those policies did and can do for this country and for the people of this country. That\u2019s what I\u2019m running with, and he is \u2014 I wholeheartedly support what he\u2019s been doing,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked after his rally Monday night about voters\u2019 concerns about high costs and Trump\u2019s handling of the economy, Collins suggested the economy would turn around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, you know, it looks like the Iran deal is done,\u201d he said, referring to an agreement to end the war with Iran, which has contributed to high gas prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe economy is moving,\u201d Collins added later. \u201cGas prices are too high, but you\u2019re going to see them start coming down awful soon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s girlfriend, who did not do work for the office. Collins has said the allegations are \u201cbogus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The aide, Collins\u2019 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\u2019 campaign account on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A supporter pressed Collins at his rally Monday about how he plans to respond to issues that had been \u201call over the ads,\u201d referring to attacks from Dooley and his allies highlighting the ethics probe and Phillips controversies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can win this thing. They can sling whatever they want, you know. I can\u2019t help that,\u201d Collins said, adding later that \u201cour real enemy is Jon Ossoff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And although the primary with Dooley had gotten negative, Collins was confident Republicans would unite after the runoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRepublicans 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,\u201d Collins said. \u201cAnd that is to make sure that we put a Republican in that U.S. Senate seat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Georgia Senate race is going to be a tough \u2014 and expensive \u2014 battle for both parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Ossoff has expressed confidence that he\u2019ll win in November, regardless of who his Republican opponent is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter which one wins,\u201d Ossoff said at a recent rally, referring to the GOP runoff. \u201cThey\u2019re both corrupt political insiders, and they\u2019re both pro-war, pro-tariff and pro-cutting your healthcare. They\u2019re both Trump puppets, and we\u2019ll beat either one of them in November.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n