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ATLANTA — Republican Rep. Mike Collins has won a primary election runoff and will challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
The Collins-Ossoff matchup will be closely watched nationally as the major political parties vie for control of the Senate.
Collins beat former football coach Derek Dooley, who had the backing of term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp, in the Republican runoff.
President Trump backed Collins, but did not wade into the Senate race officially until after early voting ended for the runoff, issuing a lengthy post backing Collins in the early hours Sunday morning.
In Trump’s endorsement post, he dinged Dooley as someone who did not have strong ties to Georgia or to his policies, and for correctly saying that Trump lost Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
“I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else, but he seems like a nice person,” Trump wrote. “Unfortunately, he has lived outside of Georgia for most of his life, didn’t vote in 2020 or 2016, and said that I lost Georgia in 2020 when, in actuality, the facts have now proven that I won by a lot!”
One argument that Dooley supporters made was that the political outsider would be the more electable candidate in a purple state like Georgia in a year that is likely harder for Republicans at the ballot box.
Republican runoff voters disagreed.
In 2026 primary contests, Trump’s endorsements have come earlier than in past cycles and have skewed toward backing safe incumbents or clearing the field for preferred candidates in open races. The last-minute intercession for Collins is an outlier, similar to his endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton a week before his runoff victory over Sen. John Cornyn.
