GOP Strategist: “ […] I do think putting forth a walking scandal machine was probably a problem.”
After CNN reporting exposed GOP U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins’ “close ties” to a neo-Nazi propagandist, the Washington Examiner today highlighted the growing concerns about Collins’ candidacy coming from within his own party barely a month after becoming the Republican nominee. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported just yesterday that similar concerns are mounting for Collins.
GOP strategists, party leaders, and Georgia voters are deeply concerned with 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.
Washington Examiner: Mike Collins’s controversies cloud Georgia Senate bid
By: Samantha-Jo Roth | July 21, 2026
KEY EXCERPTS:
- Just weeks into Georgia‘s general election, Republicans are confronting mounting concerns that Senate nominee Rep. Mike Collins‘s (R-GA) steady stream of controversies is jeopardizing one of the party’s best opportunities to flip a Senate seat and unseat Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA).
- From a House ethics investigation involving a former chief of staff to repeated staffing upheaval and now a fresh controversy involving his son-in-law, Collins has entered the general election confronting a litany of distractions that some Republicans fear are overshadowing the campaign against Ossoff.
- His first chief of staff, Brandon Phillips, became the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that Collins’s office improperly used taxpayer funds by performing campaign work while on the congressional payroll and arranging a paid internship for his girlfriend despite little or no work being performed.
- Phillips later departed after the campaign’s social media account published a vulgar post targeting the wife of a strategist for Republican rival Derek Dooley.
- His successor, Kip Talley, also drew scrutiny after Slate reported he told friends he intended to use “the levers of the legislative branch” to help secure the release of a Holocaust denier from prison.
- Most recently, CNN reported that Collins’s son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, shared posts supporting the white nationalist group Patriot Front, circulated Nazi imagery, called for the deportation of Muslims, and posted antisemitic messages targeting Jews.
- “It’s another in a series,” said a GOP political strategist familiar with Georgia races who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I don’t know how bad this one thing is, but the series of missteps is piling up.”
- Another Georgia Republican operative said concern has been building for months.
- “I think many of us have been concerned about the drip-drip-drip associated with Mike Collins and his campaign,” the operative said.
- […] he’s clearly a flawed candidate and facing a strong Democratic incumbent in a midterm election and I think that’s what makes us worried.”
- Veteran Republican activist Jay Wells recently told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Collins’s candidacy was “even worse than I could have imagined” […]
- The Democratic Party of Georgia hosted a press call featuring Jewish voters who argued the revelations raised serious questions about Collins’s judgment.
- “It does nothing to make my granddaughters safer when they go to religious school,” Auerbach said, calling the rhetoric described in the report a “real danger.”
- Asked about the CNN report by the Washington Examiner, [Senator Jon Ossoff] questioned whether Collins, his businesses, or his congressional office had employed Scheer and whether Scheer remained on Collins’s property.
- “Has Mike Collins, or his companies, or his office been paying this neo-Nazi?” Ossoff asked. “Is the neo-Nazi still based on Mike Collins’s property? And will Mike Collins apologize for his and his office’s ties to neo-Nazi ideology and notorious white supremacists?”
- “Do Republican senators endorse a man like this?” he said. “They should all be asked.”
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