President Donald Trump endorsed close ally Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary early Sunday morning, igniting a high-profile clash with Gov. Brian Kemp in the final days before Tuesday’s runoff.
In a Truth Social post, he said Collins has “been with me from the very beginning” and called him a "WARRIOR and WINNER!" He also took a shot at former football coach Derek Dooley, Collins’ rival in the runoff, quipping that “I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else, but he seems like a nice person.”
Trump criticized Dooley for not voting in 2016 or 2020, which has become a common line of attack against the GOP hopeful, and for acknowledging that Trump lost the state in 2020.
Collins, now armed with Trump’s backing, will have to beat Dooley, a political outsider who was recruited to run by Kemp. That sets up something of a proxy war between two major Republican figures, with Trump’s authority pitted against Kemp’s power in the critical battleground state.
The post comes just before the final day of voting in Georgia — and after the state’s early voting period has already ended — giving Collins only a small window to broadcast the president’s support, raising questions about how powerful the endorsement will be.
Georgia Republicans watched on as a similar scenario played out in Iowa’s governor race, where a late Trump endorsement for Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) did not prove enough to solidify a first place finish.
The two candidates spent months angling for Trump’s support, with Collins explicitly hugging the MAGA base on the campaign trail and receiving the backing of the White House-aligned Club for Growth PAC. Collins led Dooley by 40.5 percent to 30 percent in the first round of voting in mid-May.
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