President Donald Trump threw his weight behind U.S. Rep. Mike Collins days before Georgia's Republican Senate runoff, choosing the second-term congressman and trucking company owner over political newcomer Derek Dooley in a contest that will determine who takes on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff this November.
Trump announced the endorsement early Sunday on social media, calling Collins a "true friend, fighter, and WARRIOR" who "has been with me from the very beginning." The move puts the president squarely at odds with outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp, who recruited Dooley, a childhood friend and former football coach, into the race and has served as his top surrogate.
The runoff is set for Tuesday. Collins led Dooley in the May 19 primary, but neither candidate cleared 40 percent, forcing the head-to-head rematch. The winner faces Ossoff in what is expected to be one of the most closely watched Senate campaigns of the November midterms.
Collins has positioned himself as an ally of Trump and the Make America Great Again movement since his first run for Congress in 2022. He echoed Trump's claims about the 2020 election and has leaned hard into his legislative record, including his sponsorship of the Laken Riley Act, a 2025 law requiring that illegal immigrants be detained when charged with certain crimes.
That law gives Collins a sharp line of attack against Ossoff, who initially voted against the Laken Riley Act before supporting it after Trump returned to the White House. Collins has signaled he intends to hammer that flip.
On primary night, Collins made his case in plain terms: "Everybody knows that I do best with the MAGA base. It's because they know I've always been with President Trump."
He drew a direct contrast with Dooley's lack of a political record. "You don't beat Jon Ossoff by having no record," Collins said. "You win by having a record of results."
Dooley and Kemp have pushed a different theory of the race. Their argument: a first-time candidate has a better shot to defeat Ossoff in a general election. Kemp's allies point to first-term Republican senators Tim Sheehy of Montana, Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, and Bernie Moreno of Ohio, all outsiders aligned with Trump who defeated Democratic incumbents in 2024.
Dooley has told voters he will "work with President Trump but fight for you," a formulation that tries to thread the needle between loyalty to the president and independence from Washington. It is a careful pitch, and Trump's endorsement of Collins makes it harder to sustain.
The Kemp-Dooley camp also emphasizes that Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate race in Georgia since 2016, a drought that includes two painful losses in January 2021 runoffs that handed Democrats the Senate majority. By that logic, the party needs a fresh face, not a sitting congressman.
But Trump's decision to side with Collins suggests the president values proven loyalty over electability theories. And his recent track record in primary endorsements gives that calculation real weight.
The Georgia endorsement follows a pattern. Trump backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton before Paxton's victory over U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in a recent primary runoff, a result that sent a clear message about the president's ability to move Republican voters against even well-known incumbents.
Elsewhere, Trump-aligned candidates have reshaped the Republican Senate landscape. Sheehy, McCormick, and Moreno all won their 2024 races running as outsiders with the president's blessing. The common thread: Trump's endorsement functions less as a suggestion and more as a directive to the GOP base.
That influence has extended beyond Senate races. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky lost to Ed Gallrein. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana failed to make a runoff. Several Indiana state senators were defeated by challengers. The old Republican establishment keeps shrinking, and Trump-endorsed candidates keep winning.
The endorsement also revives one of the more durable fault lines in Republican politics: the tension between Trump and Brian Kemp. The Georgia governor drew the president's ire for refusing to help overturn Joe Biden's 2020 victory in the state. Kemp survived a Trump-backed primary challenge in 2022, won re-election comfortably, and has since operated as a power center in Georgia Republican politics independent of the president.
By recruiting Dooley and serving as his top surrogate, Kemp put his own political capital on the line. Trump's endorsement of Collins is, in effect, a direct answer. It forces Georgia Republicans to choose, again, between the governor's wing and the president's.
That dynamic has played out repeatedly across the party in recent years. Senior Senate Republicans who have broken with Trump on policy or process have found the political terrain increasingly inhospitable. Kemp remains popular in Georgia, but popularity and primary-election influence are not the same thing.
Ossoff is the only Democratic senator facing voters in a state Trump carried in 2024. That alone makes the Georgia seat one of the GOP's best pickup opportunities. But Republicans have fumbled winnable Georgia races before, and the choice of nominee matters.
Collins argues his legislative record, particularly the Laken Riley Act, gives him concrete ammunition against Ossoff. Dooley argues his outsider profile and Kemp's backing make him the safer bet in a general election. Trump has now settled the question from his end.
The president has also been active on other fronts in recent days, calling on Congress to expel a prominent Democratic lawmaker and continuing to use executive authority to reward allies and punish opponents.
Whether Collins can convert Trump's endorsement into a runoff win on Tuesday will test the president's grip on the Georgia Republican electorate, a state where his influence has been complicated by the Kemp rivalry and by the party's recent Senate losses.
If Collins wins the runoff, the general-election campaign against Ossoff will be a referendum on Trump-era governance, border enforcement, and whether Georgia's rightward shift in 2024 holds through the midterms. If Dooley pulls the upset, it will be one of the few times a Kemp-backed candidate has overcome a Trump endorsement in a head-to-head fight.
Either way, the race will tell us something about where power actually sits in the Republican Party, and who the president is willing to spend political capital on.
Georgia Republicans go to the polls Tuesday. Trump has made his pick. The question now is whether the voters who sent him back to the White House will follow his lead one more time, or whether the governor still has enough pull to make this a real fight.