Republican Rep. Mike Collins on Monday announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, in a crucial race for the GOP as the party aims to expand its Senate majority in next year's midterm elections.
Collins is aiming to challenge Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is running for re-election in the key southeastern battleground state that President Donald Trump narrowly carried in last year's election. And Republicans view Ossoff as the most vulnerable Senate Democrat incumbent on the ballot in 2026.
"Jon Ossoff does not represent Georgia’s values and has attacked our state's best interests at every opportunity. He’s voted to raise taxes on Georgia families, supercharge inflation, open our Southern Border, and allow men to play women’s sports," Collins argued in a statement as he launched his campaign.
Collins highlighted that "this is Georgia’s moment. This is the people’s time to take back control of this Senate seat, deliver on President Trump’s America First agenda, and kick Jon Ossoff to the curb—and together, that’s exactly what we will do next November."
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The announcement by Collins came as no surprise. Fox News Digital learned on Friday that the congressman would launch his Senate campaign early this week.
Collins, a businessman who founded a trucking company, is in his second term representing Georgia's 10th Congressional District, which includes a large swath of urban, suburban, and rural areas between Atlanta and Augusta.
The conservative lawmaker, who's the son of the late Republican Rep. Mac Collins of Georgia, has been moving closer to launching a Senate campaign for weeks.
"Tires kicked. Fueling up," Collis wrote Monday in a social media post that was accompanied by a video where he showcased his ties to President Donald Trump.
"Congressman Mike Collins, he loves this state," Trump said in a clip in the video.
And Collins' launch video, which he posted on social media on Monday morning, also includes a clip of the president praising the congressman, as well as visuals of Collins and Trump standing together.
Collins was an early backer of the president, supporting him as Trump first ran for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 cycle.
In the 2024 presidential campaign, when Trump won back the White House, Collins traveled on behalf of Trump to the crucial early-voting primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
He also appeared at multiple Trump rallies during the 2024 cycle and opened three Trump campaign offices in Georgia.
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And Collins, not facing a difficult re-election in his solidly red House seat, campaigned in ten congressional districts across the country to help elect Trump-aligned candidates as the GOP defended its razor-thin majority in the chamber.
Collins at the beginning of this year reintroduced the Laken Riley Act, which mandates that undocumented immigrants charged with burglary or theft be detained. It's named after a Georgia nursing student killed by a man who had illegally entered the U.S. The case grabbed national attention.
The bill, which quickly passed the Republican-controlled House and Senate, became the first legislation signed into law by Trump as he started his second tour of duty in the White House.
A Republican source said that Collins has a "great relationship" with the president and his political team.
And a Georgia-based Republican consultant told Fox News that "the lane that Mike is going to run in is the America First fighter who's been with President Trump."
Trump, who is the ultimate kingmaker in GOP politics and whose endorsements in Republican primaries are extremely powerful, has yet to weigh in on whom he may back in Georgia's burgeoning Senate race.
National Republicans were hoping to recruit popular two-term GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to take on Ossoff. But Kemp, who is term-limited, announced earlier this year that he would pass on a 2026 Senate run.
Republican Rep. Buddy Carter, who for a decade has represented a district in coastal Georgia, launched a Senate campaign in the spring. Carter is also courting a Trump endorsement in the GOP primary.
Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King was also running for the Republican nomination, but ended his bid on Thursday.
Former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley, who is the son of former longtime University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley, is also considering a Senate bid. The younger Dooley is close with Kemp, who's a longtime friend.
Sources in Trump's political orbit and Republican sources in Georgia confirmed to Fox News on Friday that there was an agreement between the president’s political operation and Kemp’s political team that they would work together to find a candidate that they could all unify behind to take on Ossoff in the Senate race.
Those sources also confirmed that Kemp and Trump met a couple of weeks ago to discuss the Senate race in Georgia.
But when the governor floated Dooley's name, a source close to the president's political team said "they were told to stand down."
And when Kemp and his team did move forward with Dooley, it upset Trump’s advisers, who, according to sources, were "already pretty annoyed" that Kemp had passed earlier this year on taking on Ossoff in the Senate race.
"We had a deal to work together," a top political source in the Trump orbit told Fox News on Friday.  "Kemp went out on his own – which has frustrated and pissed off Trump orbit."
But a source close to the governor told Fox News that it's factually not true that they were told to stand down on Dooley.
And the source added that Kemp meant what he said that he wants to work with the president and his team and remains that way.
A campaign announcement by Dooley could come as early as this week.
