Sen. Jon Ossoff hammered Rep. Mike Collins, his opponent in the Georgia Senate race, over his connections to staff and family members who have propagated white supremacist views.
He called Collins a “bigot” and at one point in the hour-long debate on Thursday said he had “hired half the Third Reich to staff [his] congressional office.”
“Imagine running for the U.S. Senate while neo-Nazi propaganda is disseminated to an audience of millions from your home. That’s Mike Collins,” Ossoff said, referring to Collins’ son-in-law David Alan Scheer II, who reportedly lives on a property owned by Collins.
Collins, who has a history of posting inflammatory posts from his account on X, has been dogged by a string of scandals involving his staff and family members throughout the race, including several who have far-right connections.
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Collins fired a chief of staff over the summer following reports that the staffer had been in a group chat with prominent white nationalists, in which the staffer said he was trying to free an imprisoned Holocaust denier. Another former staffer posted Nazi imagery on his personal X account. And a July CNN investigation into Scheer unearthed a history of promoting far-right conspiracy theories online.
Collins has previously issued statements condemning his staffers’ comments but has dodged questions about his son-in-law. When asked by moderators on Thursday to address the issue, Collins suggested that he had spoken with his son-in-law about it.
“I’ve condemned racism, antisemitism, hate. I don’t care where the source is, and I tell him that too,” Collins said, without specifying who he was referring to. “It’s wrong.”
Collins also noted he has fired staffers over their online comments.
Ossoff, who has consistently led in polling and has a massive cash advantage to Collins, repeatedly steered the debate back to those controversies.
Collins blamed the “craziness that Jon Ossoff has been spewing” for an alleged death threat he received, which resulted in the arrest of a man in Buffalo, New York, last week. The suspect was accused of sending death threats to Collins and his son-in-law via Instagram.
In a copy of the arrest warrant obtained by The Washington Sun, deputies alleged the suspect sent a message saying, “Ill come to Jackson and smoke you cracka ass and ya father-in-law.”
National Republican groups in recent weeks have shifted resources away from swing states like North Carolina to defend turf in increasingly competitive red states, such as Kansas and South Carolina, The Sun previously reported.
Collins’ struggles against Ossoff may be precipitating a similar retreat in Georgia. Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund has canceled nearly $2 million in Georgia ad buys, The Sun reported Thursday.
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