GEORGIA — Rep. Mike Collins advanced to a June 16 runoff in the Georgia Republican primary for U.S. Senate after no candidate secured a majority of the vote. Rep. Buddy Carter and former football coach Derek Dooley are competing for the second runoff spot.

Under Georgia primary rules, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff if no candidate exceeds 50% of the vote. The winner of the Republican runoff will face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, the only Democratic senator running for re-election in Georgia this year. President Donald Trump did not endorse any candidate during the primary.

Collins, 58, led in most public polling by stressing his MAGA credentials and grassroots appeal. He has represented Georgia in the House since 2023, after first being elected to Congress in 2022. His closing television ad featured footage of Trump praising him and noted that Collins authored the Laken Riley Act, the first bill Trump signed into law in his second term. The law addressed immigrant detention and was named after a Georgia nursing student killed by a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally.

"I am someone who has shown that I can pass bipartisan legislation and never compromises conservative values," Collins said at a campaign stop in Dahlonega. He has actively sought Trump's endorsement and declined to break with him. "Listen, I ran on Trump policies. I ran on 'America First.' I know what those policies did and can do for this country and for the people of this country," he said.

Collins is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of misusing congressional funds, including accusations that he paid his former chief of staff for campaign work and employed that aide's girlfriend, who did not perform any office work. He dismissed the allegations as "bogus."

Carter, 68, has served in Congress since 2015 after serving as mayor of Pooler, Georgia, and in the Georgia General Assembly. Dooley, 57, is an attorney who coached football at the University of Tennessee and is the son of University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley. Dooley is backed by Gov. Brian Kemp, who declined to run for Senate this cycle, and has positioned himself as a political outsider less aligned with Trump than Collins and Carter.

"If those two are our candidates, we lose. And the reason why is the focus is removed from Jon Ossoff's voting record, where it should be," Carter said.

Republicans view Georgia as a top pickup opportunity in the 2026 Senate elections. Trump won Georgia by two points in 2024 after losing the state by less than half a percentage point in 2020. Georgia has not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 2016. Ossoff's campaign had more than $32 million in cash on hand as of April 29, and he raised $14 million in the first quarter of this year.

"I think it's going to be very hard either way," said Jason Shepherd, former Cobb County GOP chairman. "We are talking about a midterm election where a Republican has the White House so we're going to have the wind blowing against us. And that should be expected," he said.