By Nolan D. McCaskill
WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - Republican voters in Georgia will choose their U.S. Senate nominee in a runoff election on Tuesday, tapping either a congressman dubbed "MAGA Mike" by President Donald Trump or a political outsider backed by Governor Brian Kemp.
The winner - Representative Mike Collins or former college football coach Derek Dooley - will face Jon Ossoff, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 and the only incumbent Senate Democrat up for reelection
in a state that Trump won in 2024.
Collins finished first in the May 19 primary with 40% of the vote, 10 percentage points ahead of Dooley. Trump endorsed Collins over the weekend, calling him a "WARRIOR and WINNER" who supported Trump "from the very beginning."
Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate but have limited opportunities to win additional seats. Their top targets are Georgia and Michigan, two states the president narrowly won. But they have a tall task in unseating Ossoff.
Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said while Ossoff is more liberal than most Georgia voters, his office has a strong constituent services operation and he spends a lot of time in the state.
"Even Republican campaign consultants, activists like that, that I talk to are pretty much willing to concede that, yeah, Ossoff's going to be able to hold this seat," he said.
OSSOFF FUNDRAISING JUGGERNAUT
Ossoff has raised $60 million and reported entering May with nearly $33 million on hand. He is currently favored to win reelection, according to political prognosticators. Neither of his remaining challengers has raised more than $5 million, and both reported less than $2 million on hand as of May 27.
The Democratic Senate Majority PAC has reserved $20 million in TV advertising in Georgia, and the Republican Senate Leadership Fund has pledged to invest $44 million into flipping the seat.
Democrats would need to net four seats in November's midterm elections to win control of the Senate. Sabato's Crystal Ball, a newsletter that makes electoral projections, shifted three states toward Democrats last week, moving North Carolina's open seat to lean Democratic and Republican-leaning Alaska and Ohio to toss-ups.
Democrats have strong candidates in each of those states: former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, former Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska and former Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Their candidacies are buoyed by Trump's low approval rating and concerns over the high cost of living, heightened by the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine is the most vulnerable incumbent Republican, representing a state that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris won by nearly 7 percentage points in 2024. She will face progressive oysterman Graham Platner, who overcame several controversies to win the Democratic nomination.
Democrats believe they have also expanded the map of competitive states to include Iowa and Texas, where Democratic voters nominated state Representative Josh Turek, a paralympian, and state Representative James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian. In 2024, Trump won Iowa by 13 percentage points and Texas by 14 points.
(Reporting by Nolan D. McCaskill; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Edmund Klamann)
