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ACWORTH, Ga. — <\/span>Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, who wants to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November, happily calls himself a warrior for President Donald Trump and his \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d movement. <\/p>\n Although it’s a sensible calling card for anyone vying for a Republican nomination these days, even some of his supporters have a few concerns ahead of Tuesday’s primary. <\/p>\n Gary Waldrep, a local party committee chairman, asked Collins at a recent campaign stop how he was going to win over at least a few of the \u201cmiddle-of-the-road\u201d voters who may have been turned off by Trump. <\/p>\n The question reflected Republican anxiety about the party’s chances in Georgia, where Democrats have demonstrated strength<\/a> in recent U.S. Senate elections and Ossoff is no longer considered as easy of a target as he once was.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI watch the polls just like everybody else,\u201d Waldrep said. \u201cI know it\u2019s going to be close.\u201d<\/p>\n Collins is competing for the Republican nomination with Rep. Buddy Carter and Derek Dooley, a lawyer and former college football coach who is backed by outgoing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Trump has not endorsed a candidate<\/a>, raising the likelihood of a June 16 runoff that would burn more time and money before the party can focus on defeating Ossoff. <\/p>\n If Ossoff loses, Democrats have almost no chance of winning a Senate majority. He’s the only senator from his party running for reelection in a state that Trump won two years ago.<\/p>\n Trump carried Georgia in two out of his three campaigns. Republicans control the Atlanta statehouse. But in the last six years, Ossoff and Sen. Raphael Warnock have won a combined three Senate contests, each time defeating a Republican who pledged fealty to Trump. <\/p>\n For this year’s campaign, Kemp rebuffed Senate Republican leaders’ encouragement to challenge Ossoff and declined to endorse either Collins or Carter. Instead, he recruited Dooley, a childhood family friend who is the son of legendary coach Vince Dooley, and tried to convince Georgia Republicans to take a chance on the first-time candidate.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMy goal is here is to win our Senate seat back,\u201d Kemp said Friday as he introduced Dooley at a gun store in Douglasville. \u201cWe need a political outsider to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Dooley, 57, said in a recent interview that there are few if any policy differences among the candidates, \u201cand so electability is everything.\u201d And in his television advertising, he attempts to split the difference between Trump’s base and the broader electorate. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m gonna work with President Trump, but for you,\u201d he tells voters in one spot. <\/p>\n Collins, 58, is a two-term House member who owns a trucking company and boasts of a \u201cgrassroots operation out there pounding the pavement across this state.\u201d <\/p>\n The second-term House member has the advantage of representing a district east of Atlanta, putting him in the media market of the state\u2019s population center. And he sponsored the Lakin Riley Act, named for a Georgia nursing student<\/a> killed by a man who was also charged for being in the U.S. illegally. The law, signed by Trump last year, requires that immigrants accused of a range of crimes be held without bond. <\/p>\n \u201cI have proven that I can deliver for the state of Georgia,\u201d Collins said in Acworth. \u201cI can even do it with bipartisan legislation. And I never compromise my conservative values.\u201d<\/p>\n Collins also has a brash social media presence has both boosted his identity as a firebrand in Trump’s mold and drawn criticism. Among his most controversial posts was sharing a video in 2024 of University of Mississippi students, nearly all of them white males, taunting a Black woman. <\/p>\n