Representative Mike Collins, a second-term congressman and immigration hard-liner, won the Republican primary runoff for Senate in Georgia on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, advancing to what should be one of the hardest-fought Senate races in November.
Mr. Collins, whom President Trump had endorsed, defeated Derek Dooley, a lawyer and former football coach who had been handpicked to run by Gov. Brian Kemp, a longtime friend and Georgia’s most popular Republican.
Mr. Trump backed Mr. Collins late in the race, on Sunday, but the president’s support was not unexpected. Mr. Collins had campaigned as a MAGA candidate, saying that he could appeal both to Trump loyalists in the Republican primary and to moderates looking for legislative experience in the general election.
Mr. Collins pointed to the first piece of legislation that Mr. Trump signed in his second term — the Laken Riley Act, which targets unauthorized immigrants for deportation if they have been charged with certain crimes.
Mr. Collins will challenge Senator Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent, who had been considered the Democrats’ most vulnerable senator seeking re-election at the start of this year but is now a more formidable incumbent. He has banked more than $32 million for the November election.
Mr. Collins’s victory handed a loss to Mr. Kemp, who despite his enduring popularity has been unable to lift fellow Republicans into the Senate. Mr. Kemp’s support and campaign appearances proved to be insufficient to engineer a come-from-behind victory for Mr. Dooley, who trailed Mr. Collins in the first-round election last month by nearly 11 percentage points.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Dooley noted that the House Ethics Committee had been looking into Mr. Collins over allegations that his office hired an intern who was romantically involved with the representative’s chief of staff and did not perform any work. Mr. Collins has dismissed the investigation as based on an anonymous “bogus claim.”
Mr. Collins, whose father served for 12 years in Congress, owns a trucking company in Jackson, Ga., his hometown.
