Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms show off head start in Georgia as Republicans battle in runoff

ATLANTA (AP) — Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia blasted his potential general election rivals on Sunday, casting 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 an exuberant crowd at The Tabernacle, a downtown Atlanta concert venue. “They’re both Trump puppets.”

Ossoff campaigned with Democratic candidate for governor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, in what their advisers described as the first of many joint rallies intended to showcase them as a team. The Democrats spoke behind a lectern decked with a placard that read “United for Georgia.”

It was a contrast to Republicans, who are still battling amongst themselves to determine their party’s nominees for Senate and governor. Hours before Ossoff and Bottoms appeared together, Collins and Dooley spent the afternoon going after each other on the debate stage ahead of their June 16 runoff.

They pledged their fealty to the president while rarely mentioning Ossoff, who they describe as too liberal for a state that Trump carried in two out of his three campaigns.

The competing events, held miles apart in Atlanta, highlight the head start Ossoff and Georgia Democrats have in a midterm campaign that could reshape the final two years of Trump’s presidency and mold the statehouse of this critical battleground state.

Like Ossoff, Bottoms awaits the winner of a Republican runoff after she trounced her Democratic primary rivals on May 19. And much like Ossoff, she painted potential opponents 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,” she said, emphasizing inflation, especially for gas and groceries. “We already know we’re running against Trump’s do-boys.”

Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state Trump carried in 2024, and holding his seat is critical to Democrats’ chances to flip control of the chamber. Bottoms is trying to become the first Democrat since 1998 to be elected Georgia governor.

In the governor’s race, Trump has endorsed Jones, who assisted the president’s failed effort to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden with false claims of voter fraud. The president has not taken a side between Collins and Dooley.

Republicans spar over ethics and experience

With Trump’s firm grip on the Republican Party, Collins and Dooley showed only slight policy differences as each sought to carve out reasons they’d be the better option to defeat Ossoff and bolster the president’s agenda.

Dooley played up his status as a first-time candidate and, despite Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House, hit Collins as being part of a do-nothing government.

“Congress is out of control,” he said. “There’s too much careerism, corruption, nothing’s getting done, Congress is not working for the people the way it should.”

Yet even as he framed himself as an outsider, Dooley touted the endorsement from two-term Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and his own family roots. Dooley’s late father, Vince, was the legendary University of Georgia football coach and longtime athletics director.

“I grew up in a football family in Athens,” said Dooley, who was briefly a lawyer before following his father’s career path in college football and the NFL.

Dooley’s hardest hits on Collins centered on an ethics investigation into whether the congressman abused taxpayer funds by hiring the girlfriend of his former chief of staff for work that the woman allegedly did not perform.

Collins insisted the issue is simply a “complaint” with no merit, not an actual House ethics case. A “nothing burger,” the congressman called it.

The Office of Congressional Conduct, after an initial inquiry, has nonetheless referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee, and Dooley noted that Republicans were among those recommending the inquiry continue.

Collins, the son of a congressman, slapped back at Dooley’s characterization of Capitol Hill. He described himself as “a conservative workhorse” and blamed any gridlock specifically on “a broken Senate” — where Ossoff serves. He touted his sponsorship of the Laken Riley Act, a 2025 immigration law that, among other provisions, requires immigrants accused of certain crimes to be held without bond.

Dooley and Collins each offered support for Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran. While Collins has previously co-sponsored legislation that would effectively ban abortion nationwide, Dooley said states should determine abortion access.

Ossoff wraps Trump and both Republicans together

Ossoff dismissed Trump as “a failed president and a national disgrace.” He held up Trump as the worst offender of a corrupt political system, highlighting his family’s profits from cryptocurrency and foreign real estate deals. And he lumped Collins and Dooley in with him.

“They’re both corrupt political insiders, and they’re both pro-war, pro-tariff, and pro-cutting your health care,” he said.

Ossoff hit Collins for the same ethics case that Dooley mentioned. He accused Dooley of benefiting from his brother’s business dealings with government.

“The coach’s family got tens of millions of your tax dollars courtesy of Gov. Kemp, and then poured cash into the governor’s pack to prop up the coach’s campaign,” Ossoff insisted.

He was alluding to Daniel Dooley being the founder of CENTEGIX, a firm that manufacturers and installs school security hardware, including so-called “panic buttons” that contact law enforcement directly. As governor, Kemp authorized grants for local systems to bolster security and later signed a law requiring Georgia classrooms to have direct contact to police.

CENTEGIX has secured contracts with school systems throughout Georgia, and Daniel Dooley has donated more than $150,000 to Kemp’s federal PAC that is backing his brother’s Senate campaign. But Dooley and Kemp advisers note that CENTEGIX has contracts in 47 states besides Georgia, and other firms compete for Georgia schools’ business.

Connor Whitney, a Dooley campaign spokesman, said Ossoff “is already lying about Derek Dooley” because he “knows Dooley is the candidate who will send him to the bench this fall.”