Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms show off head start in Georgia as Republicans battle in runoff
ATLANTA (AP) — Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff Georgia officials criticized their potential rivals in the general election on Sunday, singling out Rep. Mike Collins and former football coach Derek Dooley as unqualified lackeys for President. Donald Trump.
“It doesn’t matter which one wins,” Ossoff told the enthusiastic crowd at concert venue The Tabernacle in downtown Atlanta. “They are both puppets of Trump.”
Ossoff campaigned with Democratic candidate for governor Keisha Lance BottomsIt was the first of many joint rallies aimed at showcasing them as a team, as the former Atlanta mayor described them as a team. Democrats spoke from behind a podium bearing a banner that read “Unity for Georgia.”
That contrasted with Republicans still fighting among themselves to determine their party’s Senate and gubernatorial nominees. Hours before Ossoff and Bottoms met, Collins and Dooley spent the afternoon hounding each other on the debate stage ahead of the June 16 runoff election.
They pledged allegiance to the president while rarely mentioning Ossoff, whom they described as too liberal for a state he ran in two of Trump’s three campaigns.
The competing events, held miles apart in Atlanta, underscore that Ossoff and Georgia Democrats have a head start on a midterm campaign that could reshape the final two years of Trump’s presidency and shape the statehouse in this critical battleground state.
Like Ossoff, Bottoms is eyeing the winner of the Republican runoff after defeating her Democratic primary rivals on May 19. And much like Ossoff, he painted potential rivals Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire businessman Rick Jackson with the same brush.
“They don’t see Trump’s reckless policies as a problem, they see them as a playbook,” he said, specifically emphasizing gasoline and grocery inflation. “We already know we’re running against Trump’s business people.”
Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for re-election in Trump’s incumbent state in 2024, and retaining his seat is critical to Democrats’ chances of taking control of the chamber. Bottoms is trying to become the first Democrat elected governor of Georgia since 1998.
In the race for governor, Trump backed Jones, who helped the president in his unsuccessful effort to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 defeat with claims of voter fraud. The President did not take sides between Collins and Dooley.
Republicans spar over ethics, experience
With Trump’s tight grip on the Republican Party, Collins and Dooley cited only minor policy differences as they tried to come up with reasons why they might be the better option to defeat Ossoff and support the president’s agenda.
Dooley retained his status as a first-time candidate and accused Collins of being part of a do-nothing government despite Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House.
“Congress is out of control,” he said. “There’s a lot of careerism, there’s corruption, nothing is being done, Congress isn’t working the way it should for the people.”
Although he describes himself as an outsider, Dooley touted the support of two-term Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and his own family roots. Dooley’s late father, Vince, was the legendary football coach and longtime athletic director at the University of Georgia.
“I grew up in a football-playing family in Athens,” said Dooley, who briefly practiced law before following his father’s career path in college football and the NFL.
Dooley’s harshest blow against Collins focused on the ethics investigation into whether the congressman misused taxpayer funds by hiring his former chief of staff’s girlfriend for work the woman allegedly did not do.
Collins insisted that the issue was not a real House ethics case but a simple “complaint” with no merit. The congressman called it a “nothing burger.”
The Office of Congressional Conduct, however, after the initial investigation I referred the issue In his statement to the House Ethics Committee, Dooley noted that Republicans were among those who recommended that the investigation continue.
Collins, the son of a congressman, responded to Dooley’s description of Capitol Hill. He described himself as a “conservative businessman” and blamed any impasse specifically on the “broken Senate” in which Ossoff served. He announced his sponsorship of the Laken Riley Act of 2025, an immigration bill that would require immigrants accused of certain crimes to be held without bail, among other provisions.
Dooley and Collins each offered support for Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran. Although Collins previously co-sponsored legislation that would effectively ban abortion nationwide, Dooley said states should determine access to abortion.
Ossoff brings Trump and both Republicans together
Ossoff called Trump “a failed president and a national disgrace.” He cast Trump as the worst offender of a corrupt political system and highlighted his family’s profits from cryptocurrency and foreign real estate deals. He took Collins and Dooley with him.
“They are both corrupt political figures, and they are both pro-war, pro-tariffs, and pro-cutting health care,” he said.
Ossoff shot Collins for the same ethics case that Dooley mentioned. He accused Dooley of benefiting from his brother’s business dealings with the government.
“The coach’s family, with Governor Kemp’s permission, took tens of millions of your tax dollars and then funneled cash into the governor’s package to support the coach’s campaign,” Ossoff insisted.
It implied that Daniel Dooley was the founder of CENTEGIX, a company that manufactures and installs school security equipment, including “panic buttons” that communicate directly with law enforcement. As governor, Kemp authorized grants to local systems to improve safety and later signed a law requiring classrooms in Georgia to have direct contact with police.
CENTEGIX signed contracts with school systems across Georgia, and Daniel Dooley donated more than $150,000 to Kemp’s federal PAC, which supported his brother’s Senate campaign. But consultants Dooley and Kemp note that CENTEGIX has contracts in 47 states beyond Georgia, and other firms are competing for Georgia schools’ business.
Dooley campaign spokesman Connor Whitney said Ossoff “was already lying about Derek Dooley” because he “knew Dooley was the candidate who would send him to the bench this fall.”
