Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff wins reelection, defeating Rep. Mike Collins to hold a key Democratic seat

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Ossoff’s opponent struggled to find momentum, raise money

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For Trump, Ossoff’s victory is a notably bitter confirmation of his decline toward lame duck status. Trump endorsed Collins for the Republican nomination in a state where the president anchored his false claims that his 2020 defeat was rigged. But the two-term congressman, first elected echoing Trump’s election lies, never found momentum. He struggled to raise money, navigate his alliance with the president and defend against his ties to white nationalists and an unresolved House ethics investigation.

“Whatever Donald Trump says, Mike Collins does,” Ossoff said in one debate. “Doesn’t matter what it is. Doesn’t think for himself.”

The senator hammered Collins repeatedly as a “bigot,” emphasizing the congressman’s past social media posts, his onetime chief of staff’s communications with white supremacists and white nationalist advocacy from Collins’ son-in-law.

“If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club,” the senator said, referring to the late civil rights icon’s role in Bloody Sunday and the Voting Rights March in 1965.

Collins insisted he had always denounced racism and antisemitism, but the onslaught left him largely unable to land counterattacks that Ossoff was too liberal for Georgia.

“No one has ever asked or held Jon Ossoff accountable for any of his votes,” Collins said, accusing the senator of supporting open borders, allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, and voting “100% of the time with Bernie Sanders,” the democratic socialist senator from Vermont.

Ossoff’s aggressive approach against Trump became a model

Ossoff was first elected in 2020, defeating Republican Sen. David Perdue in a runoff held the day before Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol with hopes of stopping Democrat Joe Biden’s certification as president-elect. Ossoff’s fellow Democrat, Sen. Raphael Warnock, won a special election at the same time, both breaking historical barriers: Warnock as Georgia’s first Black senator, Ossoff as its first Jewish senator.

Warnock won reelection in 2022 with a campaign targeted more at Georgia’s moderate swing voters, reflecting the difference for a Democratic senator running for reelection with Biden in the White House as opposed to Trump. Still, Ossoff’s unabashedly aggressive approach initially struck some Democrats as a gamble. It quickly became a model, with Ossoff holding carefully produced rallies where he delivered his withering critiques of the president as young aides quickly cut video clips that were distributed online in real time.

Ossoff mocked “Prince Don Jr.,” Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s sons and son-in-law, for their international business deals. The senator called for ending the Iran war, rolling back many of Trump’s tax cuts, and blasted the president’s tariffs. He highlighted his stalled legislative proposal to bar members of Congress from trading individual stocks and pitched a constitutional amendment to limit corporate money in campaigns.

The senator also carefully navigated the politics of Israel, saying he values Israel’s security and “the lives of innocent Palestinians.” He has voted for some U.S. military aid to Israel and against other munitions grants. Ossoff said the Israeli military has violated international standards of warfare in Gaza but avoided the question of whether Israel is committing genocide — a charge levied by some on the Democrats’ left flank. Ossoff said that’s a matter for the International Criminal Court to decide.

Ossoff also leveraged the work he’s done for constituents in Georgia, earning endorsements from some local Republican officials in the historically conservative state who said he’s been an effective advocate for hurricane relief, infrastructure investments and other federal funding.

“This is what small men like Donald Trump and Mike Collins will never understand,” Ossoff said as he campaigned, “that our national greatness flows not through our blood or our genes, but through our ideas and our aspirations and our care for one another.”

Bill Barrow And Sudhin Thanawala, The Associated Press