Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) took aim at Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) in his first campaign ad since the Republican won the Senate GOP primary runoff election late Tuesday.
The two will be facing off in the general election, with the Democratic incumbent looking to hold onto his seat for a second term.
In the new ad, Ossoff’s reelection campaign targeted the Republican challenger’s history in the trucking business, specifically how Collins didn’t work his way from the ground up in the trucking industry.
“Truth is, Mike took over his dad’s trucking company and followed in his footsteps straight to Congress,” a narrator said in the two-minute video.
Former Rep. Mac Collins, who served in the House between 1993 and 2005, once owned Collins Trucking in Jackson, Georgia, before his son inherited the business. The younger Collins still maintains ties to the trucking company while serving in Congress. Collins was first elected in 2022. His father died in 2018.
Collins frames himself as an “outsider” and a blue-collar worker, but Ossoff’s campaign disputes his working-class roots.
“His rich daddy, a former congressman and career politician himself, handed Mike the keys to a company with dozens of employees, making multimillionaire Mike richer, while real truckers did the actual work,” the narrator continued. “Maybe that’s why Trump likes him so much.”
Two days before the Georgia primary, President Donald Trump endorsed Collins for the Senate, calling him a “true Friend, Fighter, and WARRIOR.” Collins’s victory on Tuesday is the latest instance of Trump-backed candidates winning their respective primaries.
“You see, Mike’s not a working trucker,” the ad states. “He’s a man who rode his daddy’s name from business to Congress, a politician who voted to hike our healthcare costs and defund rural hospitals, so he could take care of billionaires and himself.”
“A lackey who’s in lockstep with all of Trump’s chaos,” it adds. “So the next time your grocery bill climbs, you pay more to fuel your car, or your kid’s school loses funding, you can thank Mike.”
Ossoff will likely release more campaign ads attacking his Republican opponent in the months leading up to November.
With more than 55% of the vote, Collins defeated former football coach and attorney Derek Dooley for the GOP nomination. The two advanced to the GOP runoff after Collins finished first in the May 19 primary with 40% of the vote.
TRUMP-BACKED MIKE COLLINS WINS GEORGIA GOP SENATE RUNOFF
Based on the support he received from Republican primary voters in Georgia, Collins believes he has a strong chance to defeat Ossoff.
“Jon Ossoff has spent years in Washington doing the bidding of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer while Georgians paid the price at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the border,” Collins posted on X Wednesday morning. “That ends in November.”