Georgia Republicans failed to settle two of the state’s most consequential contests in Tuesday’s primary, setting up June runoffs for the U.S. Senate nomination and the gubernatorial nod. The results mean a prolonged intra-party battle in a state that has become one of the nation’s most fiercely contested political battlegrounds since the 2020 presidential election.
The Senate runoff will feature Derek Dooley, a former University of Tennessee and Louisiana Tech head football coach making his first bid for elected office, against U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican who has served Georgia’s 10th Congressional District since 2023. The Associated Press reported that U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter was eliminated from the contest after failing to secure enough votes to force the runoff himself. Georgia’s election law requires candidates to win a majority of the vote to avoid a runoff, and the crowded field prevented any candidate from crossing that threshold.
The eventual Republican nominee will go up against Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff in November. Ossoff, first elected in a 2021 runoff that — along with Sen. Raphael Warnock’s simultaneous victory — handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, is seeking a second term. His seat is again considered a top target for national Republicans as they try to retake the chamber.
In the governor’s race, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who has been the leading Republican candidate and is backed by former President Donald Trump, and Rick Jackson, a health-care industry billionaire pouring millions of his own wealth into the race, advanced to the GOP runoff. The Jones-Jackson contest has been defined by heavy television advertising and personal attacks, with both candidates sparring over conservative credentials and ties to the state’s business establishment.
On the Democratic side, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms secured her party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday, avoiding a runoff in her own contest. Bottoms, who served as mayor of the state’s largest city from 2018 to 2022, will face the winner of the Jones-Jackson runoff in November.
The runoffs will carry high stakes for national party dynamics. The Senate contest, in particular, will once again put Georgia’s evolving electorate under a microscope after Ossoff and Warnock both won their seats in 2021 runoffs driven by historically high Democratic turnout in Atlanta’s suburbs and a shift in once-solidly Republican collar counties.