(Headline USA) Georgia Republican Mike Collins on Monday joined the field challenging Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff in the state the GOP has named as their top target to add a Senate seat in 2026.
A second-term member of Congress from a district east of Atlanta, Collins became the newest top Republican to get into the primary race. U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter is already running, while state Insurance Commissioner John King dropped out. Also expected to run is former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley.
“I don’t know who Jon Ossoff really works for, but it sure as heck isn’t Georgia,” Collins said in a video released Monday. “It’s time to send a trucker to the U.S. Senate, steamroll the radical left, deliver on President Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda and put the people of Georgia back in the driver’s seat.”
Collins had been mulling a run since Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced in May that he would not run against Ossoff, depriving Republicans of their top choice to challenge a senator who won the 2021 runoff in the wake of the 2020 election. Twin victories by Ossoff and Raphael Warnock gave Democrats control of the U.S. Senate at the time and. It was the first time since 2002 that Georgia had two Democratic senators.
Although Democrats have made Georgia increasingly competitive, Collins is among those who view Ossoff’s election as a fluke and proclaim that the state is still fundamentally conservative.
The 58-year-old Collins is the son of the late Mac Collins, an eight-term Republican congressman who lost his own bid for Senate in 2004. Mike Collins is a co-owner of a family trucking firm and made a losing bid for Congress in 2014. He reemerged to win a 2022 race for an open seat, portraying himself as an everyman trucker and hard-core Donald Trump acolyte. With a big, booming personality and an edgy social media presence, Collins calls himself a “MAGA workhorse.”
Kemp and Trump have met and said they would try to agree on a preferred candidate. Anyone anointed by both would be stamped as the Republican front-runner. Kemp told Collins and others last week that he would support Dooley, but Trump isn’t ready to endorse yet.
Collins has portrayed his interest in the Senate as seeking to best serve Trump.
“I am going to continue to talk with President Trump and his team just about where we can be the best, beneficial, most help in this mission to make sure we get a Republican in the U.S. Senate from Georgia,” Collins said in a July 8 video.
Where I stand on running for U.S. Senate in Georgia. pic.twitter.com/kZg2gB5Hiv
— Mike Collins (@MikeCollinsGA) July 8, 2025
Collins’ district stretches across 18 counties from the eastern suburbs of Atlanta through Athens. His best-known legislative accomplishment is a law passed this year to require the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency to detain undocumented immigrants charged with theft. That was a response to the 2024 murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant.
The representative says he’s someone who can get things done, but often takes a combative approach on social media. In February 2024, for instance, his account on the social media platform X was temporarily suspended after he suggested that a person arrested by federal authorities should be transported by “Pinochet Air,” a reference to people thrown to their deaths from helicopters during the rule of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
That strategy could help Collins draw attention to wield against Ossoff — the only Democratic Senate incumbent seeking reelection in 2026 who represents a state Trump won. But Democratic Party of Georgia Chair Charlie Bailey said in a Monday statement that Collins has already proved he’s a “MAGA extremist” and that the campaign will “expose just how out of step Collins is with Georgia voters.”
Ossoff held his second campaign rally July 12 in Savannah. National Republicans have already launched multiple rounds of advertising against him.
Ossoff raised $21 million in the first six months of this year and had $15.5 million in cash on June 30. But that’s only the beginning. Ossoff and Warnock’s twin Senate victories in 2021 cost more than $900 million combined, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending. Warnock’s 2022 reelection over Republican Herschel Walker cost more than $470 million, OpenSecrets found.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
