By Terell Wright and Alyssa Lukpat

Rep. Mike Collins won Georgia's GOP primary runoff Tuesday over former college football coach Derek Dooley, setting up a showdown with Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff this fall in one of the nation's key battleground races.

With 56% of the vote counted, Collins received 55%, with 45% for Dooley, according to the Associated Press. Collins's campaign got a boost from an 11th-hour endorsement from President Trump. Gov. Brian Kemp, a popular Republican, had endorsed Dooley.

"Mike Collins is a true Friend, Fighter, and WARRIOR, who has been with us from the very beginning, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be your next United States Senator," Trump said in a post on Sunday.

Republicans are aiming to hold on to their 53-47 majority in the Senate. Ossoff's seat has been seen as one of their top targets for a possible pickup.

Collins, a trucking-business entrepreneur, represents Georgia's 10th congressional district, a Republican stronghold. He has positioned himself as a champion for Trump's legislative agenda. Last year he introduced and passed the Laken Riley Act with bipartisan support in the House. The legislation, named after a 22-year-old Georgia student killed by a Venezuelan immigrant, imposes harsher penalties on some people who are in the country illegally.

Earlier this year the House Ethics Committee said it would investigate Collins over allegations he paid more than $10,000 to an intern who was dating his chief of staff and performed no work. Collins's office has called the allegations meritless.

Collins spent months attempting to draw Trump's endorsement. The president didn't weigh in on the race until the Trump-aligned Rep. Buddy Carter was eliminated from the Senate primary last month after failing to finish in the top two positions in the race. Trump joined Collins for a tele-rally earlier Tuesday.

Dooley posted on X that he had "great respect" for Trump and looked forward to working with him in the Senate, but argued that a vote for Collins would lead to GOP defeat in the general election. He touted his endorsement from Kemp, who has at times been at odds with Trump, particularly after Kemp refused to question Georgia's presidential election results in 2020 after Trump lost.

Kemp and Dooley, a former college football coach, are friends and grew up together in Athens, Ga. Dooley, who campaigned on a "Georgia First" platform, has never held elected office. He advanced to a runoff after outperforming Carter, who came in third in the primary, in the wealthy, populous counties of the Atlanta metro area, where voters favored Kamala Harris over Trump in 2024.

Write to Terell Wright at terell.wright@wsj.com and Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 16, 2026 20:47 ET (00:47 GMT)

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