Republican Party hopes of picking up a reachable Senate seat were dashed on day one after a campaign blunder left critics rolling in the aisles, according to a new report.
The GOP once saw Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) as very beatable when President Donald Trump anointed Rep. Mike Collins to take him on, but that optimism has since collapsed, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Now Republicans worry he could cripple the chances of down-ticket GOP candidates in November, the report stated.
Collins' campaign stumbled out of the gate when his own launch video flashed the on-screen slogan "Georiga, Let's Ride" — misspelling his home state, turning him into a national laughingstock on social media from which he has never recovered, according to the report.
A House ethics inquiry followed, along with reports that his son-in-law had shared pro-white nationalist material online, the report noted. The bad headlines kept coming while Ossoff built a national brand attacking Trump.
The race, "once rated a tossup," is now widely seen as leaning Democratic — a rare bright spot for a party fighting long odds to retake the Senate. An August InsiderAdvantage poll of 800 likely voters put Ossoff ahead 50 percent to 43 percent, with 7 percent undecided and a margin of error of 3.46%.
"With lackluster fundraising, ongoing scandals with staffers and family," Collins is "really having difficulty breaking through," Georgia GOP strategist Jordan Fuchs, who has worked closely with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told the Journal.
"Collins’s weak showing has sparked alarm among GOP strategists and pollsters that his run could weigh on other Republican candidates in Georgia, including the race for governor and contests for offices ranging from attorney general to insurance commissioner," the Journal reported.
"There's a general concern that Collins isn't the right candidate or running the right campaign to defeat Ossoff," said Nathan Gonzales of Inside Elections.
