With a month to go until Georgia’s primary voting day, the state’s three-way Senate Republican contest is descending into a triangular firing squad.
President Donald Trump hasn’t endorsed any candidate and the GOP has failed to coalesce around a challenger to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.). Republicans are warning that the Peach State, which once looked like this year’s top Senate GOP flip opportunity, may be slipping out of their grasp.
Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) has led the pack in polls but his opponents, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) and Derek Dooley, are sharpening their electability attacks.
All of this is playing out as Ossoff boasts a huge $31 million war chest. Ossoff hauled in $14 million in the first quarter alone. The most recent public poll has Ossoff beating any challenger. Amid a foreboding national environment for the GOP in 2026, Georgia Republicans are sounding the alarm.
“Look, if Mike Collins is our candidate, we lose. If Derek Dooley is our candidate, we lose,” Carter told us.
“Our candidate can’t be sitting there having to defend either a long voting record or a House Ethics charge or a divisive social media,” Dooley said.
Trump won Georgia in 2024 by two points. Ossoff is the only Democratic Senate incumbent running in a Trump-won state. But Republicans are all too aware that despite Georgia’s reddish tint, Democrats have won the last three Senate races.
“You got to have a candidate who not only can energize and mobilize the Republican voters — the Trump voters — but connects with voters that don’t always vote Republican,” Dooley said.
Collins is seen as the most conservative option and brushed off his opponents’ attacks as confirmation of his leading status.
“That just goes to show that they understand who’s the frontrunner in this race,” Collins said.
Where things stand. Senate GOP leaders wanted popular two-term Gov. Brian Kemp to run, but he decided not to. Instead, without securing widespread GOP buy-in, the governor backed Dooley, a family friend who has never run for political office.
So far, Collins — a three-term House member — has a double-digit lead in the polling average. Collins says he’s the right candidate because he’s not a career politician but still has “a record of results” in Congress.
Carter has been running ads labeling himself a “MAGA warrior,” but is still polling in the low teens. Dooley is campaigning alongside Kemp but is also trailing well behind Collins. If no candidate clears 50% in the primary, the top two advance to a June 16 runoff.
Collins’ lead is causing consternation among some Republicans.
“If the most conservative person comes out of the primary, there’s the worst matchup in the general, particularly in a year where we have headwinds,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told us. “If you cut that image, then you’re necessarily going to alienate unaffiliated soccer moms and whoever else may be trending away from us anyway.”
Republican campaign committees insist that Ossoff is still vulnerable due to a voting record that consistently pits the Democrat against Trump’s priorities. And Senate Leadership Fund, the top Senate GOP super PAC, has already placed $44 million in ad reservations in a bid to stave off Ossoff’s cash advantage.
Headwinds. Georgia Democrats overperformed by over 20 points during an April 7 House special election in the deep-red 14th District. Democrats touted the special election data point as a sign of their strength even in an inhospitable corner of the state.
None of the Senate Republican hopefuls said the results concerned them. Dooley said it was “dangerous” to make an “overarching generalization.” Carter argued that special elections are always “wild cards.” And Collins said the Democratic spending advantage meant the result wasn’t surprising.
