Trump's Georgia Pick Falters; Ossoff Leads by 7
Trump's Georgia Pick Falters; Ossoff Leads by 7
The News
Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican President Trump endorsed to unseat Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, has run a campaign so troubled that GOP strategists now fear he will drag down the rest of the state's ticket, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The race was once rated a tossup. The Journal reports most politicos now see it as firmly blue.
An August InsiderAdvantage poll cited by Raw Story put Ossoff ahead 50% to 43%.
Timeline
Collins announces his Senate candidacy. His official "war room" account on X posts a short campaign video that ends with the on-screen slogan "Georiga, Let's Ride," misspelling his home state. The blunder makes him a national laughingstock on social media, according to the Journal, and he never recovers from it.
A House ethics inquiry follows, along with reports that Collins's son-in-law shared pro-white nationalist material online, the Journal reports.
Ossoff builds a national profile attacking Trump and surges in state polling.
An InsiderAdvantage survey of 800 likely voters has Ossoff at 50%, Collins at 43% and 7% undecided, with a margin of error of 3.46%, per Raw Story.
The Wall Street Journal publishes its account of the campaign. Political Wire and Raw Story amplify it the same morning.
Reactions
Georgia GOP strategist Jordan Fuchs, who has worked closely with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told the Journal that "with lackluster fundraising, ongoing scandals with staffers and family," Collins is "really having difficulty breaking through."
"There's a general concern that Collins isn't the right candidate or running the right campaign to defeat Ossoff," said Nathan Gonzales of Inside Elections.
The Journal reports that Collins's weak showing has sparked alarm among GOP strategists and pollsters that his run could weigh on other Republican candidates in Georgia, including the race for governor and contests from attorney general to insurance commissioner.
Raw Story, writing from the Journal's reporting, framed it as the GOP panicking over a "laughing-stock Trump endorsee." Political Wire called it "the GOP Senate campaign gone disastrously wrong."
What's Next
Georgia votes in November. Republicans need the seat; Democrats need it and more to make their long-shot push to retake the Senate work.
The immediate question inside the Georgia GOP is whether Collins can fix his fundraising and his staff problems in time, or whether down-ballot Republicans — governor, attorney general, insurance commissioner — start running away from the top of the ticket.
More
On the sourcing
This story rests on one piece of original reporting: the Wall Street Journal's Sept. 7 account of the Collins campaign, which carries the quotes from Fuchs and Gonzales and the reporting on the ethics inquiry and the son-in-law's posts. Political Wire and Raw Story are downstream — both are summarizing and quoting the Journal, not reporting independently. The Frank could not read the Journal piece directly; it is behind a paywall, and the quotes above are as those two outlets reproduced them.
The polling number comes from Raw Story's citation of an August InsiderAdvantage survey. The Frank has not seen the crosstabs.
Collins has not been charged with anything. The House ethics inquiry and the reporting about a family member's social media posts are described here as the Journal described them.
Poll
Can Mike Collins still beat Jon Ossoff in November?
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