Georgia Senate Race
Could Define
Future
Presidential Stakes

| published October 25, 2026 |

By R. Alan Clanton,
Thursday Review editor

Georgia U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff doesn't seem to mind that he is a frequent straw man for President Donald Trump in Trump's speeches. Ossoff's political trajectory has long been guided by his own disdain for Trump, and Ossoff himself frequently embraces his identity as a crucial anti-Trump voice.

In his own appearances, Ossoff's stinging jabs at Trump have made the Senator something of a celebrity among Democrats, and, predictably, Trump and the White House now make Ossoff a regular target of ridicule. Trump now often refers to Ossoff as the Pee-Wee Herman of the Senate.

It can be safely and fairly said that—at least based on their speeches—Trump and Ossoff have become the best of enemies. This dynamic could become even more ferocious and shrill as Trump enters his last two years in the White House, and the 2028 presidential sweepstakes comes into focus.

Ossoff is locked into a close race against Republican challenger Mike Collins, and though Ossoff has been holding onto a modest lead for weeks, the numbers have continued to tighten. Like a dozen other states around the country, the balance of the United States Senate may rest with the outcome of several razor-close elections.

Ossoff would obviously like to win by trouncing his opponent, a Trump-endorsed Republican. For better or worse, Collins has so closely-linked himself to the Trump brand that Collins' talking points are often completely aligned with those of Trump. And though Collins surely saw this as a winning strategy a year ago as his candidacy was developing, like many Republicans across the country, his political fortunes may suffer on Election Day as a result of voter dissatisfaction with the economy and with the U.S. war with Iran.

Some within the Collins campaign worry rather openly that Collins may have reached his plateau in terms of support, despite what looked to be the kind of early energy needed to oust an incumbent Senator. Having linked himself so solidly with Trump, Collins has had difficulty in recent weeks distancing himself from the recent downsides of the Trump economy—an issue which most agree could be the decisive factor on Election Day in states like Alaska, Michigan, Texas, and Maine.

Both Collins and Ossoff have spent heavily thus far, and the Georgia race could break records for state spending by the time it is over, though in the last ten days—as reported by Politco and other news media who track spending—some of that heavy cash flow has slowed down.

Is this a sign that the GOP is leaning toward writing-off Georgia? Is it a sign that Democrats have become confident enough about Ossoff's chances in the Peach State that precious cash would be better served channeled into Texas, or Michigan, or Ohio? In Iowa, for example, Republican Ashley Hinson holds only a scant one half percent lead over Democrat Josh Turek. In Michigan, where former President Obama has recently campaigned, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed holds a narrow lead over the Republican, congressman Mike Rogers. In Alaska, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan hopes to retain his seat, though he is in a virtual dead-heat with Democratic challenger Mary Peltola.

Depending on the views of the pollsters and the statisticians, any race that is within a roughly three point difference is too close to call. In past elections—2016, the 2018 midterms, and again in 2024—such narrow margins generally spells trouble for Democrats, who have greatly underperformed on Election Days (most infamously in 2024, when Kamala Harris shed millions of Democratic voters).

But in the new reality of Trump's perceived poor handling of the economy, the tide could shift—if only enough to let Democrats retake the Senate. And that means every competitive race is critical, including in Florida (where Republican Ashley Moody and Democrat Angie Nixon are battling for every vote), and in Georgia, a normally safe state for Republicans, but which elected Ossoff to the Senate in 2021.

The Senate election in Georgia has been bitter, and at times ugly. Two recent televised debates in October between Collins and Ossoff each deteriorated into ridicule and nasty name-calling. Collins has labelled Ossoff a creature of a woke mentality and a minion of extremist leftwing ideologies, pinning Ossoff to the usual boogeymen for the GOP—Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, and the aforementioned Harris. Ossoff has accused Collins of racism, and forced Collins into an uneasy acceptance of the hundreds of times Collins has linked himself directly to MAGA and Trump.

In those contentious debates, Ossoff has demanded that Collins explain his alleged connections to white supremacist groups and white nationalist figures on the internet, and of tolerating neo-Nazi propaganda. Collins accused Ossoff of actually running for President, suggesting that Ossoff's 2026 reelection campaign is effectively a Trojan Horse for the 2028 presidential race, and that Ossoff is the "DSA candidate" in reference to the Democratic Socialists of America (in neighboring Florida, Nixon is campaigning for the Senate as a bona fide member of the DSA). Collins says Ossoff has no interest in Georgia other than as a steppingstone to the White House.

Both candidates exchanged heated barbs about the Epstein files, and both blamed the other for the economic struggles of those in Georgia. Both have accused the other of some form of extremism or radicalism, and Ossoff has said that Collins has a track record of anti-Semitism.

Collins complained that it was Ossoff's heated rhetoric that spurred a New York man to threaten the life of Collins. Ossoff and Collins also attacked each other on the issue of the U.S. war with Iran and on the rising costs of fuel and gas, each blaming the other party. And though Collins of late has been silent on the subject, Ossoff has made it abundantly clear that Collins is an election denier—one of several high profile Trump supporters who claim the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, and the Trump actually beat Joe Biden.

Revealingly, neither candidate spent much time answering the worst charges by the other, prompting observers of the debate to suggest the candidates were "talking past one another," and seeking merely to land the lowest blows for the audience and the cameras.

Trump—who has spent much time blasting Ossoff—has campaigned in Georgia several times on behalf of Collins. And like his fellow Republicans in Florida, notably Byron Donalds and Ashley Moody, who are running for Florida Governor and U.S. Senator respectively—for months Collins' direct mail and TV advertising have included the point of his close association with the President, and Trump's endorsement.

When Trump appeared at a large airport rally in Dalton, Georgia ten days ago, the President urged voters to oust Ossoff—whom Trump claimed was never legitimately elected—and send Collins to the U.S. Senate. At the same appearance in Dalton, Trump also campaigned for gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson.

Like lots of Republicans across the country, Collins angled early for the Trump endorsement, and linked almost all campaign advertising and outreach to make clear he (Collins) is a full-fledged Trump loyalist. But, like many of those same Republicans, the economic stresses of spring eventually wrought the much harder economic challenges of summer: rising gas prices, oil over $110 per barrel, diesel shortages ahead of winter, rising food costs, and worries that even nearly full employment, most American families are still facing hard times.

Complicating things for Republican Mike Collins in Georgia has been the fallout from recent revelations—begun by CNN only weeks ago—that Collins' has for the third or fourth time joked that he wouldn't mind seeing some Washington officials and some politicians executed publicly by being thrown from aircraft and hung from helicopters. Collins fist made such comments in 2021 in the context of the hectic and rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. But Collins had made those jokes many times since, and once quipped that Nancy Pelosi should be thrown from an airplane.

But more troubling for Collins was the very recent revelation that his son-in-law, David Alan Sheer, is a not-so-secret promoter of white nationalist and neo-Nazi propaganda on the internet—an online influencer who regular posts material with Nazi imagery and violent extremist viewpoints, much of which is produced and promoted from a property owned personally by Collins. Collins has largely sough to ignore or deflect the issue, but Ossoff has latched onto this news as proof that Collins is unfit to serve Georgia in the Senate.

And Collins has taken some heat for his past loyalty and praise for Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers, who was censured by her own Arizona legislators for her close associations with hate groups and white nationalists, and for her sometimes violent rhetoric, including her endorsement of executing those who disagree politically with those on the Right.

Ossoff's willingness to spar intensely with both Collins—who can sometimes seem an easy target—and with Trump (a much more resilient political opponent) has spurred a growing cottage industry of observers convinced that Ossoff will indeed—despite his protestations—eventually seek the Presidency. Many Democratic insiders see Ossoff's rise to prominence as evidence that the party may be finally, at long last, finding its footing and its strategic voice in the age of Trump. And with Trump's retirement from the White House now looming two years out, Ossoff will no doubt rise to the top ten list of potential Democratic candidates in the run-up to 2028.

In this sense, Collins is right on the money: Ossoff, whether he chooses it or not, will be seen as a top-tier candidate—despite Ossoff's repeated statements to the press and the media that he has no interest in running for President. This raises the stake for Collins, who clearly savors the opportunity to derail an Ossoff train long before it gains speed out of the station. And thus the feedback loop: the dynamic multiplies media attention on Ossoff, who will be blamed for poor strategy or poor handling of the issues if he loses to Collins, because Democrats badly want a winning path forward, something which has eluded the party for a decade.

Ossoff also has a talent sometimes lost on most Democrats in the age of Trump: the ability to get-out-the-vote.

Born in Atlanta, Ossoff's rise came in 2017 when he ran for an open congressional seat in the Atlanta suburbs after Trump selected Republican Tom Price to head HHS. In a GOP dominated district, Ossoff lost narrowly to Karen, but the heavy media scrutiny placed him on the watch list for lots of Democrats looking at those who might represent the next generation. Even in this loss, Ossoff had managed—incredibly—to spur one of the most impressive get-out-the-vote campaigns even seen, though in the end he simply couldn't overcome the Republican vote that year.

The close loss set him up for the next move in 2020 when Ossoff scored big for Democrats by beating the odds, which in fact meant defeating a Trump-supported incumbent candidate for the Georgia Senate seat, David Perdue. But that win was fraught with challenges, not the least of which was that neither Perdue nor Ossoff gathered the required majority of votes (50% or greater) to win outright in November, under Georgia law the top two vote-getters automatically advance to another runoff, which was held in January, 2021—an unusual after-season runoff that angered Trump and fueled Trump's theory that Perdue had won the election (Perdue had gathered slightly more votes that Ossoff in the November election; Ossoff spurred a massive get-out-the-vote campaign in January that pushed him to final victory).

Trump has been sore about that outcome ever since.

At times, it seems that Trump and Ossoff are already opponents in some imaginary match-up, though Trump would have to ignore the 22nd amendment of U.S. Constitution to make that Dream Match happen. In reality, if Ossoff is true to his word that he has no genuine interest in the 2028 Presidential election (it would be easy to imagine a theoretical match-up between Vice-President JD Vance and Senator Ossoff), he would be on target for 2032, beyond which all bets are off.

In the meantime, Collins has only days to close the polling gap as Ossoff is holding with a very slight edge—a lead which may mean little in the Age of Trump, and when polls have proven famously incorrect after all the votes are cast.


Related Thursday Review articles:

Florida's Governor's Race Set: Donalds Will Face Jolly; By R. Alan Clanton, Thursday Review editor; August 19, 2026.

Alaska Senate Race Has Become a Critical Contest; By R. Alan Clanton, Thursday Review editor; August 20, 2026.