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Jon Ossoff, the only incumbent Senate Democrat defending a seat in a state President Trump carried in 2024, has won the U.S. Senate race in Georgia.
Ossoff defeated Republican Rep. Mike Collins, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
A year ago, Democrats and Republicans envisioned the race in Georgia as one of the cycle's marquee Senate showdowns.
But in Collins, the GOP in Georgia nominated a candidate whose personal baggage alienated independents and some Republican-leaning voters.
In Ossoff, Democrats were buoyed by a candidate who won respect at home even from some Republican officials for the strength of his constituent services. And outside Georgia, Ossoff electrified Democrats searching for fresh faces to lead the party out of the political wilderness.
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On paper, the race should have been closer. In 2021, Democrats flipped both of Georgia's Senate seats blue for the first time in a generation. In the 2022 midterms, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock barely held onto his seat in a runoff, even against a deeply flawed opponent.
Otherwise, Republicans have continued to win nearly every other statewide race in Georgia.
In the Republican primary this spring, Trump endorsed Collins over former football coach Derek Dooley, a first-time candidate backed by Georgia's popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
Collins, the owner of a family trucking company, struggled to dispense with scrutiny over his ties to family and former staffers who have espoused white nationalist and antisemitic views. Collins also continued to embrace Trump's false claims about widespread election fraud in 2020.
Ossoff, a former congressional aide and documentary filmmaker, first appeared on the national stage when he waged a closer-than-expected attempt to flip a suburban House race in a special election in 2017. After Georgia sent Ossoff to the Senate in a 2021 runoff, he gained attention for his methodical grilling of Trump appointees during hearings on the Hill.
As clips from Ossoff excoriating alleged graft in Trump's orbit in rally speeches ricocheted around the internet over the course of the campaign, many Democrats began to mention him as a possible presidential candidate. Ossoff has said he is not running for the White House in 2028.
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