The winner of Georgia’s GOP Senate primary will be decided in a June 16 runoff after no single candidate received a majority of votes cast in Tuesday’s primary. MAGA election denier Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) will face off against football coach Derek Dooley, who has repeatedly stopped short of saying the 2020 election was stolen and privately admitted Trump lost that election in audio leaked earlier this year. Tuesdays results are only a half-win for the dominant, hardline sect of the GOP, as their other self-professed MAGA warrior Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter came in third place.
Republicans have a 53-45 seat majority in the U.S. Senate now, but with 33 of 100 seats up for grabs this November, the party is hoping to not just hold but expand its majority.
When Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff faces his Republican opponent in November’s general election, he’ll be up against whoever wins June 16th’s a duel for the ideological heart of the Republican Party — either a reactionary candidate who embraces a movement that is an existential risk to democracy, or a politically conservative candidate who supports the disenfranchisement of many groups of voters — but who at least would, probably, support free and fair elections.
When the Associated Press called the race at 11:16 p.m. ET, Collins had roughly 40 percent of the vote to Dooley’s 30 percent. Carter trailed behind with 25 percent.
Dooley was endorsed by Gov. Brian Kemp, who drew Trump’s ire when he refused to invalidate the 2020 election results. After sitting in third place through most of the pre-election season polling, Dooley started moving up around March and was a close second among 800 likely voters polled by InsiderAdvantage the weekend before Tuesday’s election.
In a recent interview cited by the Associated Press, Dooley said “electability is everything” because he and the other leading candidates were mostly, if not completely, aligned on policy.
Dooley and his allies have pointed to his record as a former football coach to try to brand him as a political outsider, the same angling that won Trump support from people who’d felt alienated by officials in Washington. His alignment with Trump runs deeper. He’s also partial to blaming undocumented immigrants for crime in the U.S. despite data disputing this conservative talking point, and even praised Trump’s invasion of Iran, launching a war that other Republican officials have started questioning publicly.
Where he’s parted with the president is in his rather tepid support for the administration of Georgia’s 2020 election. As a Senate candidate, he’s tried to avoid riling up believers in the Big Lie while also appealing to more moderate Republican voters.
When the FBI raided the Fulton County election office, Dooley gave a limp statement neither lauding nor deriding the administration’s obvious overreach.
“Federal law enforcement officials are conducting a lawful investigation and should be allowed to continue that process,” Dooley said at the time. “Governor Kemp and our state legislature have enacted reforms to ensure our elections are secure, accessible, and fair, and we must remain vigilant in the future to strengthen confidence in that process.”
Publicly, Dooley has said the Georgia 2020 election was “rife with irregularities” and undermined Georgia voter trust, despite three recounts and several investigations which found no evidence of fraud significant enough to change the outcome of that contest. Every inquiry has affirmed the actual result of the 2020 election, which is that former President Joe Biden won fair and square in Georgia and throughout the country.
But in private, Dooley admitted Trump lost, according to a report from the Washington Examiner.
Despite, or maybe because of, Collins and Carter’s all-in MAGA stances, Trump did not endorse in the race. Now, before Republicans can galvanize unified support behind one of two disparate candidates and focus on defeating Ossoff — a strong, moderate Democratic candidate who broke Georgia’s first quarter fundraising record — they have to expend more resources rallying voters for the runoff.
Collins, unlike Dooley, is an election denier who gave a social media stamp of approval for the late-January FBI raid on Fulton County’s election office, writing “Go get ‘em Kash” in a post — which he deleted just ahead of Tuesday’s election. His unconventional X account is home to anti-immigrant rhetoric, random “on this day” historical facts, constant derision of Democratic policies and unbridled praise for Trump and his administration.
Collins was leading in just about every poll taken since last fall, including an InsiderAdvantage poll of 800 likely voters taken the weekend before the primary. Pollster Matt Towery of InsiderAdvantage pointed to the “lack of national resources” as a warning sign for Republicans hoping to flip Ossoff’s seat in the party’s quest to add seats in Congress.
“Donald Trump won Georgia in 2024 because Republicans participated in early voting in record numbers,” Towery said. “However, Georgia Republicans have received a paltry amount in funds from national sources to push early voting in this cycle.”
Whoever comes out on top of the runoff will be fighting an uphill battle. Though there are months before November’s general election, a host of polls have Democrat Ossoff holding on to his seat.
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