Trump-Backed Rep. Collins Wins Senate GOP Primary Runoff in Georgia

BRUNSWICK, Ga.—Georgia Rep. Mike Collins prevailed in the U.S. Senate Republican primary runoff on Tuesday and will take on Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff in the general election this fall.

Collins, who received a late endorsement from President Donald Trump days before the contest, garnered 55.2 percent of the vote by 8:37 p.m. ET, when the Associated Press called the race, over challenger Derek Dooley, who trailed with 44.8 percent.

“Georgia, I’m honored to be your Republican nominee for the United States Senate,” Collins wrote in a post on X after the race was called. “Now it’s time to get to work, defeat Jon Ossoff, and take this seat back for the people of this state.”

The Epoch Times spoke with about two dozen Georgia voters at several polling locations on Tuesday, and they were split in whom they support.

As Sandy Hacker pulled out of the Kingsland Municipal Court parking lot in Kingsland, Georgia, where she cast her ballot, she rolled down her window to shout out whom she voted for.

She said she believed Dooley “would best support Trump and what he’s doing.”

Vivian Mason told The Epoch Times outside the Camden County Recreation Center in Kingsland that she also voted for Dooley but for a completely different reason: because Trump did not endorse him.

“Anybody he endorses, I definitely do not,” Mason said.

She said she believes Dooley, because he’s a political outsider, could defeat Ossoff in the general election.

David Green disagreed, saying Collins has the best chance of defeating the incumbent.

“We’ll see who comes out ahead, but we need a change in Georgia, because I don’t believe Ossoff has done anything for us,” Green told The Epoch Times, outside Harriett’s Bluff First Baptist Church in Woodbine, where he voted.

Voter Johnny Ingram concurred.

“The senator we have now, I can’t tell you anything that he’s done,” Ingram said.

He cast his ballot for Collins at Kingsland Municipal Court, saying he has the best chance of taking down Ossoff in the general election.

Ingram expressed concern, though, that much of the Peach State doesn’t see things the same way he does and worries Georgia might remain with two Democratic senators: Ossoff for a second term and Sen. Raphael Warnock, who will be up for reelection in 2028.

“We’re two different states. We really are,” Ingram said. “We got the metropolis, and then we got the smaller … We’re not country anymore.”

Collins and former football coach Dooley advanced from the state’s primary election on May 19, when neither won more than 50 percent of the vote. Collins, before Trump’s backing, received 40.5 percent, and Dooley trailed with 30.2 percent.

Trump’s June 14 endorsement in a Truth Social post broke months of silence on one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races this midterm cycle.

“It is my Great Honor to endorse ‘MAGA’ Mike Collins, a Highly Respected Congressman who has been with me from the very beginning, and is running for the United States Senate in Georgia, a very special place to me, and where we just had a BIG Presidential Election Win with the Most Votes Received by any single Candidate in Georgia’s History, for any Election,” Trump wrote.

Collins cosponsored the Laken Riley Act, a bill requiring federal immigration authorities to hold illegal immigrants without bond who are arrested, charged, or convicted of certain crimes. The act became the first piece of legislation that Trump signed into law after he returned to the White House in 2025.

Although Collins received Trump’s backing, Dooley has been endorsed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who appeared with the former football coach on the campaign trail the day before the runoff. Dooley has banked on his “political outsider” status as a reason for voters to cast their ballots for him.

Even without Trump’s endorsement, Dooley vowed to work with the president if he were elected.

“As your Senator, I’ll put Georgia First. I’ll do that by working with President Trump to get his agenda done and bringing some Georgia common sense to D.C.,” his website reads.

Georgia’s Senate race is drawing national attention as Republicans vie to flip the battleground-state Senate seat on Nov. 3 to bolster their slim majority in the upper chamber. Ossoff, a first-term senator who ran unopposed in the May 19 primary, narrowly won his seat in 2021 to help give Democrats control of the Senate.

The Cook Political Report has reported that Georgia’s Senate race favors Democrats but not decisively.