First attack ad churns Georgia’s uncertain Republican Senate primary

Georgia’s Republican Senate primaries are heating up a month before voters go to the polls, with Rep. Buddy Carter launching the race’s first attack ad, former football coach Derek Dooley taking to the airwaves and Rep. Mike Collins touting his fundraising.

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

The three Republicans are vying to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, one of the GOP’s top targets as the party seeks to expand its 53-47 majority in the Senate. With three major candidates splitting the May 19 primary vote and President Donald Trump having so far refused to name a front-runner, the race is expected to head to a June 16 runoff.

Carter’s campaign has dominated the airwaves so far, spending $5.5 million on ads through the primaries, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. Dooley spent $519,000, while Collins spent $170,000, largely on digital ads.

Carter’s latest ad, launched Monday, clashes with Collins as he faces an ethics committee investigation into allegations he misused congressional funds by paying his former chief of staff for campaign work and employing that aide. girlfriend, who did not work for the office.

The Office of Congressional Conduct released a report late last year saying “there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Collins used congressional resources for unofficial or unauthorized purposes.” Collins spokesman Corbin Keown told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the ethics complaint is “false,” calling it “a sad attempt to derail one of Georgia’s most effective conservative lawmakers in Congress.”

But Carter is seeking to exploit that issue in the race, launching a new attack on Collins that will be broadcast statewide and is backed by $2 million in air time, according to the Carter campaign.

“While Trump and Buddy Carter were protecting our wallets, Mike Collins was abusing them. Collins is under federal investigation for misusing taxpayer dollars to benefit himself and his cronies. We simply can’t trust or afford Mike Collins,” a narrator said in the ad.

Keown, Collins’ spokesperson, said in a statement to NBC News that Carter’s ad is “a sad attempt to salvage one of the worst payback campaigns Georgia has ever seen.” Keown also suggested that the “MAGA base” rejects Carter’s campaign.

“The only people who make money from his advertising are his consultants Yankee and Jon Ossoff,” Keown said.

Meanwhile, Dooley airs his first ads, presenting himself as a “conservative outsider.” Dooley is a former football coach at the University of Tennessee. His father was a legendary coach at the University of Georgia.

“As a football coach for 30 years, I can spot these ‘me first’ guys a mile away, and we’ve got to get rid of them,” Dooley said in his first television ad of the race. “And as a senator, I will never forget that you are the boss. And they need accountability: term limits, banning stock trading, ending government shutdowns. And up there, I will work with President Trump, but for you.”

Dooley doesn’t mention in the ad that he was endorsed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, but Kemp and his political operation boosted Dooley on the campaign trail and on the airwaves.

Kemp’s super PAC, Hardworking Americans Inc., has spent $813,000 on ads so far during the primary. And Kemp joined Dooley on a recent tour across the state.

Dooley and Kemp said during a campaign stop last week at a barbecue restaurant in Marietta that Dooley’s biggest obstacle in the race was not one of the members of Congress lined up against him in the Republican primary. Instead, the challenge they see is reaching the group of voters who aren’t yet tuned into the race.

“The biggest competition right now is the undecided, because I think more than half of voters have not engaged or made a decision about this election,” Dooley said.

Kemp echoed that, saying, “When you really look at the polls, I mean there’s 40, 50 percent of the people that didn’t even take part. »

Collins’ campaign has argued that he is the favorite in the race, touting his recent $1 million fundraiser, surpassing Dooley and Carter’s fundraising totals for the first three months of the year. Dooley raised $663,000 and Carter $470,000.

“There is only one campaign that has successfully built a machine poised for victory in November, and as every Georgia Republican sees and knows, the sooner we can unite around Mike Collins, the better off the entire Republican ticket will be,” Collins campaign manager Josh Siegel said in a statement last week, later adding, “Clever ads are expensive, but authenticity is priceless.”

Carter ended March with the most money in his campaign account: $3.7 million, thanks to a $3 million loan from the candidate himself. Ossoff, however, continued to stockpile cash ahead of a hotly contested race in November, ending March with $31.7 million in his campaign account.

Ossoff is the only Democratic senator running for re-election in a state won by Trump in 2024. Sen. Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, is not running for re-election.

Trump, who won Georgia by 2 points in the last election, has stayed out of the Republican Party primaries so far, even as all candidates fight to win the president’s endorsement.

Dooley said on the campaign trail last week that he “would love and be honored to have the president’s support, but my focus is on the voters, because at the end of the day, they are the ones who press the button on the ballot box.”

Kemp noted that he had conversations with Trump and White House political staff.

“It doesn’t look like they’re going to intervene, but you never know what they might do,” he said. “But they also know that [Dooley’s] the one who has the wind in his sails in the race at the moment.