Georgia’s Senate election will be a key race this November as Democrats aim to retake the chamber, and a runoff election Tuesday determined Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D) challenger: Mike Collins (R), an extremely pro-Trump Republican whose office personnel issues are dwarfed only by the congressman’s own prolific social media presence, which is steeped in radical far-right rhetoric and violent anti-immigrant ideology.
Collins led the more moderate Derek Dooley (R) after the May primary and was expected to win the runoff.
With roughly 52% of the vote counted, per the AP, Collins had 55% and Dooley had 45%.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) endorsed and supported Dooley throughout his campaign. Dooley has never run for office and presented himself as a political outsider removed from the toxicity of politics. But he may be a bit too removed. Dooley admitted he hadn’t voted in the 2016 or 2020 presidential election.
Despite the complicated relationship between Kemp and Trump — thanks largely to Kemp’s refusal to embrace conspiracy theories about the 2020 election — Dooley also vied for Trump’s favor. He made his campaign slogan “Georgia First,” a nod to Trump’s own branding, and reportedly met with the president for 90 minutes in the Oval Office back in August 2025. Dooley did not, ultimately, go far enough for Trump: he did not perpetuate the lie that Trump won the state of Georgia and that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, a fact Trump noted pointedly as he endorsed Collins.
Collins took office in Congress in 2023 and quickly emerged as a firebrand on social media. He leaned in to the moniker of “memer in Congress” — and his posting became extreme, even for MAGA standards. He has parrotted at least twice an extremist far right fantasy — “Pinochet air” — about throwing disfavored people from helicopters.
In addition to his at times violent online presence, Collins also has already gained a reputation for hiring problematic staffers. His first chief of staff-turned-senior campaign advisor is the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation into whether he used Collins’ office to pay his own girlfriend for a possibly nonexistent internship. Collins’ second chief of staff reportedly participated in a group chat with white nationalists including Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer where he shared information about his attempts to help the far-right troll and Holocaust denier Chuck Johnson, who was at the time in jail for contempt of court.
Following the murder of nursing student Laken Riley, for which an undocumented immigrant was convicted, 46 Democrats joined Republicans to pass Collins’ Laken Riley Act, which tightens requirements for federal immigration authorities and expands the rights of states in immigration criminal justice issues.
Because of his controversies, Collins is viewed as a weaker candidate against record-breaking fundraiser Ossoff.
For his part, Ossoff has lumped Collins and Dooley together as Trump stooges.
“They’re both corrupt political insiders, and they’re both pro-war, pro-tariff, and pro-cutting your healthcare,” Ossoff reportedly said at an Atlanta event at the end of May.
