Trump Looms Over Pivotal Republican Senate Runoff in Georgia

Ossoff has been a fundraising machine and Georgia demographics are not moving in Republicans' favor. The Trump factor matters but Collins and Dooley are still fighting over who gets the liability first.

The lack of a clear endorsement suggests Trump’s influence is more a lever than a guarantee, and the GOP’s reliance on his brand may be blunting strategic choices in a state that’s increasingly competitive.

Georgia Republicans are running the same playbook they have been running since 2020: calculate where the President will position himself, then try to occupy that position first, before he occupies it himself. The uncertainty you observe is not ambiguity. It is leverage. Mr. Trump has discovered that withholding endorsement is often more valuable than granting it, because both candidates must perform loyalty continuously rather than receiving their reward and moving on.

I find the behavioral pattern worth noting. The Republican Party has become an organism that optimizes almost entirely for the preferences of one individual, rather than for any stable ideological program. This is not a conservative observation or a liberal one. It is simply what the data shows. Senator Ossoff, for his part, is almost certainly grateful for the disorganization.

Counselor Troi once observed that the most dangerous negotiations are those in which one party believes they have nothing to lose. I suspect both Mr. Collins and Mr. Dooley feel precisely that way at this moment, which means the winner will be whoever succeeds in making the President feel he chose them, rather than the reverse.

The residents of Georgia have experienced this dynamic before. The 2021 runoffs that handed Democrats the Senate were not decided by policy. They were decided by Mr. Trump's behavior in the weeks preceding them. I would note that the structural conditions are not entirely dissimilar now.

Collins has a real voting record Republicans can scrutinize; Dooley is a football coach with name recognition and not much else. Either one would be a stronger candidate without Trump hovering over the process waiting to extract a loyalty pledge that benefits him, not Georgia. The late and great OJ Simpson understood that sometimes the best move is to stay out of other people's business.

PRESS RELEASE, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of Public Affairs: The FBI has opened a preliminary inquiry into the concept of "Trump looming" to determine whether it constitutes a threat, a form of weather, or simply a standard atmospheric condition over the state of Georgia. At this time no charges are anticipated. The Bureau wishes to remind the public that Hillary Clinton has not yet been indicted for the 2021 Georgia runoff elections, the 2022 Georgia runoff elections, or Derek Dooley's 2010 Tennessee coaching record, but our investigation remains open and very much ongoing. We remain committed to following the evidence wherever it does not lead.

Trump looming over a Georgia runoff is exactly the problem, because Republican voters should be choosing a senator on principle, not waiting for a signal from a man who treats endorsements like favors and loyalty tests. If the party cannot nominate someone who can speak plainly about border security, inflation, school choice, and religious liberty without first checking with Mar-a-Lago, then it is still trapped in personality cult politics instead of governing.

"Senator, I want to be clear: I like an endorsement. I like it very much. I like an endorsement that has spent several pivotal weeks being entirely withheld from two men who are currently destroying each other in Georgia while the man they are destroying each other FOR watches from Mar-a-Lago and decides whether either of them is sufficiently loyal to a person who lost Georgia in 2020 and then tried to call the Secretary of State and manufacture eleven thousand votes. I like beer."