GOP activist: “Mike Collins should have never made it out of the primary”
After CNN reporting exposed GOP U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins’ “close ties” to a neo-Nazi propagandist, the AJC today highlighted the growing concerns about Collins’ candidacy coming from within his own party barely a month after becoming the Republican nominee.
GOP activists, party leaders, and Georgia voters are sounding the alarm on Collins’ campaign as he continues facing a slew of scandals, including an active federal investigation into the illegal misuse of tax dollars, renewed scrutiny over his office’s ties to prominent white supremacists and efforts to free a Holocaust denier from jail, as well as outrage over his antisemitic harassment of a Jewish reporter and praise for a young man who harassed a Black woman by making monkey sounds.
AJC: Mike Collins won the GOP base. Can he convince the rest of the party?
By: Greg Bluestein | July 20, 2026
KEY EXCERPTS:
- Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins enters the general election facing a challenge that goes beyond winning over swing voters: convincing Republicans in Georgia and Washington that he can defeat Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.
- It is a far different task from the one Collins faced in the primary, when he built his campaign around loyalty to President Donald Trump […]
- “This is even worse than I could have imagined,” said Jay Wells, a veteran Republican activist from southwest Georgia.
- “Mike Collins should have never made it out of the primary,” he added.
- […] Collins has little room to distance himself from an unpopular president.
- But a measure of despair is seeping in. Even U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, the race’s third-place finisher, acknowledged on SiriusXM that Collins was “way behind” and warned that a poor showing could be a “drag at the top of the ticket.”
- That tight embrace of Trump isn’t Collins’ only November vulnerability.
- The House Ethics Committee is reviewing allegations that Collins’ office misused taxpayer funds, including claims that his former top aide, Brandon Phillips, performed campaign work while drawing a congressional salary and arranged a paid, no-show internship for his girlfriend. Collins has called the complaint a “nothing burger.” Collins later cut ties with Phillips after his campaign account posted a vulgar attack involving the wife of a Dooley strategist.
- Phillips’ successor, Kip Talley, attracted scrutiny after Slate reported he told friends he would use “the levers of the legislative branch” to help a Holocaust denier secure his release from prison. Collins has since hired his third chief of staff in a year.
- The latest controversy involved a family member rather than an aide. CNN reported that his son-in-law posted white nationalist propaganda, Nazi imagery and antisemitic conspiracy theories […].
- Or as Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator, AJC contributor and critic of Collins, put it on social media: “I told you guys the scandals for Collins would pile up.”