If you’d told a savvy Georgia operative a few months ago that Republican Rep. Mike Collins would outraise his top GOP rivals in the opening weeks of the Senate campaign, they probably would’ve laughed in your face.
Derek Dooley, a former football coach with a name-brand pedigree, had the strength of Gov. Brian Kemp’s political network behind him.
Dooley’s campaign hoped his first fundraising report would showcase that advantage — a show of strength against Collins, a favorite of the grassroots MAGA crowd — and Rep. Buddy Carter, another ally of President Donald Trump wealthy enough to underwrite his own bid.
Instead, Collins ended his first fundraising quarter with about $1.9 million raised, just edging Dooley’s $1.85 million haul. And because of a transfer from his House campaign account, Collins said he will report $2.4 million cash on hand. Carter, meanwhile, will report nearly $4 million on hand with the help of seven-figure loans.
The result is the U.S. Senate race still lacks a clear Republican front-runner to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. And Trump, whose advisers were said to be watching the reports closely, may now have a harder time deciding whether to back anyone or remain on the sidelines.
By the end of a contest expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, these figures will look like a drop in the bucket. And their hauls pale in comparison to Ossoff, who raised another $12 million over the same time frame — and now sits on a $21 million war chest.
Credit: Sarah Peacock for the AJC
Credit: Sarah Peacock for the AJC
But they already complicate Dooley’s case. His pitch is that he’s a Kemp-backed outsider who can better contrast with Democrats than two sitting lawmakers with long records. Yet his supporters also argue he’s the kind of candidate who can raise the cash needed to defeat Ossoff, who has raised more than $200 million since launching his first Senate bid in 2019.
While Dooley’s donor list is dotted with GOP heavyweights aligned with Kemp, Collins outdid him by amassing mostly small-dollar donations from more than 40,000 contributions scattered across all 50 states.
Cultivating that sort of national network is costly, but with an average gift of $47, the network they’ve build can be tapped again and again.
“The establishment doubted us,” Collins said. “But the grassroots folks helped pull us through this thing.”
Dooley’s haul would have been impressive on its own — among the largest for a Georgia Republican Senate candidate in an opening quarter. Sure, he had help from Kemp’s formidable machine, which hosted big-money fundraisers across Georgia.
But Dooley’s allies remind that even with Kemp’s backing, he remains a first-time candidate asking donors for big checks. They also point out that he’ll have help from Kemp’s fundraising committee, which can raise unlimited cash to boost his bid.
“We’re really excited about what our first quarter numbers were, and we’re certainly going to keep working that,” Dooley said at a Savannah event. “But the most important thing for me is getting out with the voters and the people of Georgia.”
As for Carter, he framed his growing campaign account as a sign of his political strength.
“The others can keep fighting for second,” Carter said. “We’re focused on winning for Georgia.”
Veteran Republican strategist Jay Morgan, a former Georgia GOP executive director unaffiliated with the campaigns, said Dooley’s haul is an “impressive tribute” to Kemp’s operation while Collins’ numbers reflect a “fresher statewide network.”
“They support Mike now for the same reason they supported Kemp in the past races — they admire his work ethic and fierce determination in the face of a challenge.”
With the reports filed, the next phase of the race begins — a three-way contest for Trump’s blessing. Dooley met privately with the president in August, and both Carter and Collins have aggressively lobbied him for support.
The first round of auditions is over. What comes next will test more than their wallets. It will test who can win over the party’s base, along with the man who still defines it.
Staff writer Adam Van Brimmer contributed to this report.
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