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A lot has happened since Friday when it comes to candidates vying to be the Republican Party’s nominee in the 2026 May primary to face Democrat incumbent Jon Ossoff in the November election. For starters, state Insurance Commissioner John King dropped out of the Senate race to run for re-election to his current post. This occurred with Gov. Brian Kemp continuing to float the name of his friend, former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley (who has no political experience or affiliation), as a good Senate candidate. 

With the governor touting a Dooley candidacy, though, a source close to President Doanld Trump’s political team told James Magazine Online (and other media outlets) that “Kemp’s team were told to stand down” because the president wasn’t ready to agree on a nominee at this time. Kemp and Trump last month had even talked about a “unity” candidate they could agree on, but this has now fallen apart.

Fox News reports that when Kemp and his team moved forward with Dooley, it upset Trump’s advisers. According to sources, they were “already pretty annoyed” that Kemp had passed on the opportunity earlier this year of taking on Ossoff in the Senate race.  

So, Trump and his Georgia GOP allies have now pushed to get their own loyalist into the Senate race— one with a solid conservative record to please the statewide GOP voter base. And that would be U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, perhaps best known as the sponsor of this year’s popular Laken Riley law that toughens some criminal penalties on illegal aliens.  Collins is expected to announce early this week, perhaps even today.  

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, who represents Savannah and the coast, is staying in the GOP Senate race for now. And he has already spent heavily on anti-Ossoff ads as well as ones introducing himself.