U.S. Senate: Collins and Dooley square off in Georgia Republican runoff
The Republican U.S. Senate battle is a fight between wings of the party.
U.S. Rep. Mike Collins is playing to the MAGA base by framing himself as a far-right brawler in the mold of President Donald Trump.
Former football coach Derek Dooley sees independent and crossover voters as the key to victory in November, a strategy akin to the one used by Gov. Brian Kemp, his near-constant companion on the campaign trail.
The race also pits change against experience. Collins has leaned on his tenure in Congress. while Dooley is playing up his status as a political newcomer who won’t be vulnerable to attacks on his voting record.
Collins and Dooley advanced to the June 16 runoff after finishing at the top of a three-way primary battle that included U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-St Simons Island.
The runoff winner will face Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff, who is seeking a second term, in the Nov. 3 general election.
Here are the candidates:
Mike Collins
Collins, 58, owns and operates a trucking business in Middle Georgia with a fleet of more than 100 tractors and 180 trailers. The Jackson native graduated from Georgia State University.
Politics runs in the family. His father, Mac Collins, served in the state Senate before being elected to Congress in 1992. He represented the 8th Congressional District for more than a decade.
Mike Collins lost his first bid for Congress in 2014 to Jody Hice. But he had better luck in 2022 when he ran to succeed Hice, who did not seeking reelection, defeating Trump-endorsed Vernon Jones in a runoff and trouncing his Democratic opponent in the heavily Republican 10th Congressional District.
The combative congressman has made waves by pushing inflammatory and sometimes false claims on social media that have been called racist, antisemitic or xenophobic. One even led to a temporary suspension of his X account.
At the same time he has worked across the aisle, winning Democratic votes for the Laken Riley Act, which gives federal immigration agencies broader authority to detain undocumented immigrants accused of a crime. Signed into law last year by Trump, the measure was named after the nursing student murdered while jogging on the University of Georgia campus.
Collins has been embroiled in a House ethics inquiry centered on allegations that his then-chief of staff Brandon Phillips misused taxpayer funds by paying his girlfriend for a no-show internship. Collins has denied any wrongdoing, calling it a “nothing burger.” Collins stood by Phillips, before finally cutting ties in May over an inflammatory social media post targeting a staffer in Dooley’s campaign.
Derek Dooley
Dooley, 58, a political unknown when he entered the Republican race for U.S. Senate last year, has a famous pedigree. His father is the late legendary University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley.
Derek Dooley graduated from the University of Virginia, where he was a walk-on wide receiver for the football team. He returned to Athens to earn his law degree from UGA.
He followed his father into coaching, with stints at Southern Methodist University, LSU and the NFL’s Miami Dolphins before taking the head coaching job at the University of Tennessee in 2010. He was fired before the end of the 2012 season after amassing a 15-21 record over three seasons.
Dooley returned to the NFL to coach for the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. Most recently, he served as a senior offensive analyst for the Alabama Crimson Tide.
The Rabun County resident has been hammered for sitting on the sidelines. State voting records show he didn’t vote in 2020 in New York, where he lived at the time. He also didn’t cast a ballot in Georgia’s 2024 presidential primary, two years after registering to vote here.
Dooley has said he was consumed by coaching at the time.
Kemp, a longtime friend of Dooley’s family, recruited him to run, lending Dooley the full weight of his political network and campaigning alongside him across the state.
Dooley’s campaign is trying to capitalize on Kemp’s popularity. In an AJC poll from May, 85%, of likely Republican voters approve of how Kemp was handling his job. He even fares decently with Democrats, with 42% approval.
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