President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Rep. Mike Collins on Saturday, making a late break in Georgia’s Republican Senate runoff just as the race enters its final days. Collins is facing Derek Dooley in Tuesday’s election, and the winner will go on to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the midterms.
The endorsement matters because it lands at the point in the race when undecided Republican voters are most likely to be making a final choice. Collins, who represents Georgia's 10th Congressional District, is not an outsider to Georgia politics. He is the son of the late Rep. Mac Collins and the founder and co-owner of a trucking company with his wife. Dooley, meanwhile, is a lawyer and former University of Tennessee football coach whose family name is already familiar to Georgia voters through Vince Dooley.
Trump had stayed neutral through the primary and runoff until Saturday, when he chose Collins after last month's primary left Collins and Dooley as the top two finishers in a crowded field that also included Rep. Buddy Carter. No one cleared 50%, which sent the contest to Tuesday’s runoff. For Collins, the endorsement gives him the backing of the Republican Party’s most influential figure at the exact moment the race narrows to one-on-one combat.
But the endorsement does not erase the political cross-currents around him. The House Ethics Committee has been investigating Collins over allegations tied to an intern in a district office, and Collins has denied wrongdoing. At the same time, Brian Kemp is backing Dooley, and the governor and Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp have regularly appeared with him on the campaign trail. Kemp is term-limited, but his choice still carries weight in a state where Republican voters are being asked to choose not just a nominee, but a path into November.
That is what makes this runoff so closely watched. Republicans view Ossoff as the most vulnerable Senate Democrat seeking re-election, and the Georgia Senate contest is part of the wider push to take back a seat that could help shape control of the chamber. Trump’s late move gives Collins a powerful boost, but the final test is simpler than the politics around it: whether enough Republican voters hear the endorsement before Tuesday to change a race that was already tight enough to go to a runoff.
