ATLANTA-When Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins announced his candidacy for Senate last year, his official "war room" account on X posted a short campaign video that ended with the on-screen slogan: "Georiga, Let's Ride."

From that widely mocked spelling mistake on day one to a House ethics probe to revelations that his son-in-law made white nationalist posts on social media, Collins has suffered a series of setbacks that have hobbled his campaign. Meanwhile, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has developed a national profile by blasting President Trump and surged in state polls.

Most politicos see the race, once considered a tossup, as firmly blue, strengthening Democrats' long-shot push to take back the Senate this fall and marking a big disappointment for the GOP.

"With lackluster fundraising, ongoing scandals with staffers and family," Collins is "really having difficulty breaking through," said Jordan Fuchs, a longtime Georgia GOP strategist who worked closely with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Collins's weak showing has sparked alarm among GOP strategists and pollsters that his run could weigh on other Republican candidates in Georgia, including the race for governor and contests for offices ranging from attorney general to insurance commissioner. Polls show the governor race tight, with Keisha Lance Bottoms aiming to become the first Democrat elected to the post since 1998. Democrats are also pushing a long-shot effort to take the GOP-led state House of Representatives, which Republicans have controlled since 2005.

In a recent speech in Emerson, Ga., Collins said he and other GOP candidates were united and would win the election. He attacked Ossoff as left-leaning and out of touch with Georgia's values.

"Jon Ossoff is about as far from Georgia as you can get. He's California's third U.S. senator," he said.

The latest polls show Ossoff, 39 years old, with a comfortable lead over Collins, 59. An August survey by InsiderAdvantage, a conservative-leaning Georgia-based pollster, found Ossoff leading 50% to 43% with 7% undecided. The margin of error was 3.46%.

Collins spokesman Meyer Siegfried said Collins has been closing the gap, noting that the poll only showed him down by single digits, compared with the double digits of a previous survey.

"There are repeated public polls that show the race moving in Mike's direction, so to report anything otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of reality," Siegfried said.

Not the right candidate?

Still, one Georgia GOP strategist told The Wall Street Journal that some Republican leaders already consider the Collins campaign lost. Another strategist said that GOP leaders worry that if Collins loses by more than six points to Ossoff, he will drag down other Republican candidates, since most voters cast ballots along party lines.

"There's a general concern that Collins isn't the right candidate or running the right campaign to defeat Ossoff," said Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of Inside Elections, a political analysis and research firm that tracks races across the country.

Early in this election cycle, GOP strategists in Georgia and Washington hoped Ossoff was vulnerable. But prominent Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp, declined to run against Ossoff. Collins fought a fierce three-way race for the nomination, battling with Buddy Carter, another Republican congressman, and Derek Dooley, a former football coach backed by Kemp.

Trump declined to endorse any of the candidates until two days before a runoff this June, when he backed Collins over Dooley. "He is a WARRIOR and WINNER!" Trump declared in a Truth Social post. In a July speech in Marietta, Ga., Trump praised Collins as "certainly one of the most highly respected congressmen, Republican or Democrat, in Washington." He called Ossoff "Pee Wee Herman."

As of June 30, Ossoff's campaign had raised about $98 million this term, with $77.3 million since the start of 2025. Collins has raised $7.4 million since last year, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Collins is getting outside help. One Nation, a GOP-aligned advocacy group backed by the Senate Leadership Fund, said it planned to spend $15 million targeting Ossoff. Earlier this year, the fund pledged to spend $44 million on the race. The group said on Friday that it started airing television advertisements against Ossoff as part of those committed funds.

A summer of scandal

Collins's campaign has faced a series of scandalous headlines. In July, CNN reported that Collins's son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, had shared posts that promoted antisemitic and white nationalist views. In comments on social media, Scheer said all Muslims should be deported and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Voter and property records show Scheer lives on property owned by Collins. Collins has said that Scheer has no role in his campaign and condemned the comments.

There was also renewed media attention on Preston Parra, a former Collins House intern, who posted images on his X account showing himself posing in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Parra told the Journal that the photo was out of context and reporters were "missing the whole artistic visionary aspect of it all."

Collins said Parra wasn't affiliated with his campaign and said such views "are absolutely abhorrent and they don't represent my values or the values of our country."

Ossoff has highlighted the controversies.

"We have a sitting member of Congress and a candidate for the United States Senate with extensive ties to white nationalism and neo-Nazi ideology," Ossoff said at one press conference.

Collins also faces ethics questions. The House Ethics Committee released a report in January from the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Conduct that found "substantial reason to believe" that Collins used congressional resources for unauthorized purposes. The report alleges that his chief of staff hired an intern for a no-show job. Collins has called the allegations meritless.

Collins is the son of the late Mac Collins, a longtime congressman who worked in the trucking industry; he died in 2018.

Mike Collins followed in his father's footsteps, working in trucking and then running for Congress in 2022. In a campaign commercial for the congressional seat, Collins falsely claimed Trump had won the 2020 election in Georgia, then used a rifle to shoot a trash can labeled "voting machine."