Republicans Are Terrified Trump’s Disastrous Pick Will Sink Key Ticket
Some politicos already see the one-time toss-up race as being lost, a new report alleges.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Republican leaders in Georgia are already conceding that the Senate race in the state has been lost and may even doom their party down the ticket, a new report alleges.
Fears of a down-ballot blue wave in Georgia are growing now that polls show the Senate race, once considered a toss-up, now comfortably favors incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff, local politicos tell The Wall Street Journal.
Rep. Mike Collins’ loyalty to President Donald Trump in Congress earned him a late endorsement in his Senate primary—despite a number of scandals that have rocked his campaign.
mikecollinsga.com
President Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate, Rep. Mike Collins, has been plagued by scandals involving his staff and family, all while Ossoff builds a national brand as one of Trump’s top critics.
“There’s a general concern that Collins isn’t the right candidate or running the right campaign to defeat Ossoff,” Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of Inside Elections, told the WSJ.
Jordan Fuchs, a longtime GOP strategist, said Collins is suffering from “lackluster fundraising,” familial and staff scandals, and is “really having difficulty breaking through.”
Said scandals include CNN revealing in July that his son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, whose address is registered to a property owned by Collins, is “a pro-White nationalist and social media influencer with a track record of sharing antisemitic material and Nazi imagery.” A month later, images were unearthed of a former Collins intern depicting himself as a KKK member and sharing swastikas.
Former Mike Collins intern Preston Parra said he liked the “edginess” of his old boss’ social media output while working in his office.
Screengrab/The Washington Post/Nathan Howard via Reuters
Collins has condemned both the comments and images.
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Collins is being out-fundraised by a wide margin, raising just $7.4 million since last year compared to Ossoff’s $77.3 million since the start of 2025. He is also contending with a House ethics investigation into whether his chief of staff hired his girlfriend to be paid for a no-show job.
Even before his summer scandals, the Cook Political Report moved the Georgia Senate race from “toss-up” to “Lean D.” Now, the discussion is less about who will win in November, but about what the margin of victory for Ossoff will be.
One Georgia politico tells the Journal that the danger figure for down-ballot Republicans is 6 percentage points. If Collins loses by more, the official said Georgia Republicans will struggle in statewide elections for governor, attorney general, insurance commissioner, and more.
Recent polling is likely adding to Georgia Republicans’ angst. A voter survey conducted by conservative-leaning, Georgia-based pollster InsiderAdvantage found Ossoff leading 50 percent to 43 percent, with 7 percent of voters undecided.
The Georgia governor’s race between Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms and the Republican billionaire Rick Jackson is considered a toss-up, unlike the Georgia Senate race.
Reuters
That same poll determined that Rick Jackson, a Republican billionaire, and Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat and the former mayor of Atlanta, are tied in the governor’s race. A Democrat has not won a gubernatorial election in Georgia since 1998.
No 2026 poll tracked by The New York Times shows Collins within 4 points of Ossoff. A poll sponsored by Fox News, published on July 1, pegged Ossoff as being ahead by an eye-popping 13 points.
Collins’ campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment. His spokesman, Meyer Siegfried, claimed to the Journal that polls showing a single-digit gap prove the race is moving in Collins’ favor, noting that previous surveys showed Ossoff leading by more.
“There are repeated public polls that show the race moving in Mike’s direction, so to report anything otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of reality,” Siegfried told the paper.
Collins prevailed in a bitter Republican primary against Buddy Carter, another Republican congressman, and Derek Dooley, a former football coach who was backed by the state’s outgoing governor, Brian Kemp. Trump endorsed Collins two days before a runoff election in June, writing that he is a “WARRIOR and WINNER.”
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