Ossoff Wins Big in Georgia Senate Race, Easily Defeating Collins to Secure Re-election

Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff has been re-elected in Georgia's US Senate race, defeating his Republican challenger Mike Collins. The Associated Press called the race, one of the most closely watched contests in the battle for control of Congress in the midterm elections.

Ossoff was the only incumbent Senate Democrat defending a seat in a state that President Donald Trump carried in the 2024 presidential election, which is why both parties watched the outcome in Georgia with extra attention.

A year ago, Democrats and Republicans alike envisioned the Georgia race as one of the cycle's marquee Senate showdowns. In the end, however, Ossoff easily defeated Collins.

Ossoff made his re-election campaign a referendum on the Trump administration's alleged misdeeds, highlighting self-serving stock trades and business deals by the president and those in the president's orbit. He also centred his campaign on the consequences of the war in Iran and the impact of Trump's trade policies on the pocketbooks of Georgia's voters.

Ossoff also outraised his rival by a wide margin. He raised at least $115.9 million for the election cycle, many multiples of what Collins raised, and he had never trailed Collins in the polls.

Republican candidate Mike Collins owns a family trucking company, and his campaign focused on immigration enforcement and anti-transgender policies. In the Republican primary this spring, Trump endorsed Collins over Derek Dooley, a first-time candidate and former football coach backed by Georgia's popular Republican Governor Brian Kemp.

Collins's campaign, however, was badly marred by questions over ties between his family and former staffers and far-right extremists. CNN reporters revealed that Collins's son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, who had worked with his trucking business, advocated white supremacist and Nazi views online. Collins's former chief of staff Kip Talley and other aides had also met white nationalists Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, who had been asking Collins's office to intervene on behalf of Charles C Johnson, a Holocaust denier and right-wing activist incarcerated on contempt of court charges.

Ossoff repeatedly hammered Collins over these connections in debates and campaign advertising. That personal baggage alienated independents and some Republican-leaning voters, reports said. At home, Ossoff had also won respect even from some Republican officials for the strength of his constituent services.

The win carries weight in Georgia's recent political history. In 2021, Democrats flipped both of Georgia's Senate seats blue for the first time in a generation. In the 2022 midterms, Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock barely held his seat in a runoff, even against a deeply flawed opponent. Otherwise, Republicans have continued to win nearly every other statewide race in Georgia.

Ossoff's own rise has been a long road. A former congressional aide and documentary filmmaker, he first appeared on the national stage in 2017, when he waged a closer-than-expected attempt to flip a suburban House seat in a special election. After winning a Senate seat in a 2021 runoff, he gained attention for his methodical grilling of Trump appointees during hearings on Capitol Hill.

During this campaign, clips of Ossoff excoriating alleged graft in Trump's orbit in rally speeches ricocheted around the internet, and many Democrats began to mention him as a possible presidential candidate. Ossoff has said he is not running for the White House in 2028.