Collins kicks off U.S. Senate bid in Georgia with show of force

“We need to run Washington like a business, and he’s just the man to do it.”

The rally drew hundreds on a rain-soaked afternoon to a lakeside venue in Collins’ rural Georgia hometown, and it was meant as an early show of force in the muddled race.

Signs proclaimed Collins the “conservative workhorse,” and the crowd was dotted with high-profile Republicans who endorsed his campaign or were curious to hear his message.

Notably missing from the speech were the jarring attacks that Collins has recently unloaded on Derek Dooley, the political newcomer and former football coach backed by Gov. Brian Kemp.

The two-term incumbent left that to surrogates, who brought up Dooley’s spotty voting record — he has acknowledged he rarely voted in presidential elections over the last 20 years — and his lack of a long record of public support for Trump.

One of the loudest roars came when Bruce LeVell, who once headed Trump’s national diversity coalition, urged the crowd to send Dooley a message: “Hey, I see what you are doing, but you would be better off in our camp, because we are in a winning camp.”

It was the kind of moment Kemp hoped to avoid when he sought to broker a compromise candidate with Trump early on to prevent a bruising primary.

The idea was that a united GOP could help marshal the party’s resources for the real fight: a general election battle against Ossoff.

But ongoing talks between Kemp and Trump haven’t yielded a consensus candidate, and the crowd of hundreds at Collins’ kickoff served as a reminder of how messy the upcoming GOP primary could turn out to be.

“He’s a phony,” said Vincent Bond, a Jackson small business owner who held aloft a sign disparaging Dooley. “He hasn’t showed up before. And I don’t know where he’s been. I can’t trust him.”

It was the first formal rally of Collins’ bid for Senate. He used it to trace his path to politics.

The son of the late U.S. Rep. Mac Collins, Mike Collins highlighted his record drafting bills signed into law by Democratic President Joe Biden and Trump.

“These bills didn’t just pass because I dropped them in the hopper, called a press conference and called it a day. I went door to door,” he said. “That’s called being a workhorse. The good Lord called me to work, and I absolutely love it.”

The latter bill, an immigration crackdown named after slain nursing student Laken Riley, is likely to be central to Collins’ campaign. Riley’s mother and stepfather endorsed his campaign earlier this week.

But his path is anything but certain. Kemp, who regularly polls as the most popular Republican in the state, is putting his political might behind Dooley’s campaign.

Republican insiders aren’t counting out U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, a wealthy veteran lawmaker who is also waging a campaign geared toward Trump supporters as the truest “MAGA warrior” in the field.

So far, Collins’ campaign is working to lay the groundwork. He’s scored a string of key endorsements and tapped an important Kemp ally to serve as one of his campaign’s chief fundraisers.

And his team built a sprawling grassroots network, publishing a list of hundreds of activists across Georgia’s 159 counties — no small feat in a state where more senior Republicans often struggle to cultivate similar networks.

Voters are bracing for a brutal primary. Maxwell Pichan, a small-business owner who recently moved from Silicon Valley to Georgia, trucked down from Forsyth County to show his support. He acknowledged it’s “super early” to pick sides.

“But Collins is an effective business owner, which matters to me. And he’s an effective member of Congress,” he said. “He’s got a real chance to be a long-term statesman for Georgia.”