Conservative radio host Erick Erickson is refusing to vote for Georgia’s Republican Senate nominee, and it has set off a nasty online brawl with one of President Donald Trump’s longtime campaign aides.
Erickson hosts the nationally syndicated “Erick Erickson Show” and contributes to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In a column for the AJC this week, he said he will vote for every other Republican on his ballot but will leave the Senate line blank instead of backing Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), who is challenging Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.).
“I am tired of the parties continually shoving bad candidates down our throats, telling us we have to save the country from the other side, and then everything keeps getting worse,” Erickson wrote. The column ran under the headline “Don’t force Mike Collins down my throat. I’m voting for all other Republicans.”
“For 20 years, I have heard that every election is the last election and that conservatives must hold their noses, close their eyes, and pull the lever or lose the country,” he wrote. “America is still here. The candidates, however, keep getting worse.”
Former Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer called the decision “foolish.”
“Candidates are nominated in primary elections open to all voters. They are not selected by ‘the party,’” Shafer wrote on X. “Erickson can vote for whoever he likes but his vote here is not punishing the party. It is punishing the state and the nation.”
Tim Murtaugh, a Republican communications strategist who served as a top communications aide on Trump’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns, went further.
“Obviously @EWErickson thinks people will throw him a parade for his stunning courage in torching his own career and reputation among Republicans,” Murtaugh wrote. “The left will never accept him and there simply aren’t enough jobs at The Bulwark to support everyone who voluntarily exiles himself.”
Erickson fired back, accusing Murtaugh and others of selling themselves out to the party. He used a crude term for them, “political w-----,” again and again.
“As for torching my career, I’m regularly #1 among the 25-54 in a top 10 market and the most listened talk host in Atlanta,” Erickson wrote. He added that his audience “skyrocketed” after he refused to support Trump in 2016, “because I haven’t compromised my positions and have been willing to object to my own side’s behaviors.”
Murtaugh accused Erickson of seeking “praise from corners where they mock you.” He said Erickson was willing “to turn control of our government over to a bunch of leftists who would usher in policies that will lead us to full-on communism.”
“You have abandoned all principles you once claimed to have had,” Murtaugh wrote.
Erickson responded by recounting what his family went through after he opposed Trump in 2016.
“My daughter was given a guide to commit suicide by her classmates. My son was beaten up on the playground,” he wrote. “We had 3 men show up at our home to threaten us. My family had to have security.”
“I wasn’t doing it for praise then. I’m not doing it for praise now,” Erickson wrote. “I’m doing it because the right, like the left, has festering racism and antisemitism rising.”
He then leveled serious accusations at Collins, claiming the congressman “has surrounded himself with white nationalists, Holocaust deniers, antisemites, and men who abuse both dogs and women.”
“He has defended them, sheltered them, and employed them repeatedly,” Erickson wrote. “And I will not vote to send them to Congress anymore than I’d vote to send communists to Congress.”
Murtaugh didn’t back down.
“Your ‘conviction’ helps empower leftists to plow through every safeguard in our government designed to defend the rights of individuals in this country,” he wrote. “It isn’t possible to express enough contempt for someone who would do that, especially since you simultaneously congratulate yourself for your own virtue.”
“Contemptible,” he added.
Conservative author James Lindsay also chimed in, writing of Erickson’s critics: “These people are Woke psychopaths who want to destroy anyone who opposes them at all.” Erickson replied: “Yes.”
“If you want me to vote for a Republican candidate,” Erickson wrote, “put up one who hasn’t surrounded himself with antisemites, racists, white nationalists, guys charged with animal cruelty and assault.”
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