AJC: “The Democratic incumbent used the debate to put Collins on the spot, challenging him more than a dozen times over his ties to white nationalists, an ongoing ethics investigation and his support for President Donald Trump’s agenda.”

Atlanta, Ga. — New reporting in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlights Senator Jon Ossoff’s “trial of Mike Collins” in the first General Election U.S. Senate debate in Georgia, where he challenged Republican opponent Mike Collins “more than a dozen times over his ties to white nationalists,” and spent “much of the night keeping Collins in the defendant’s chair.”

Meanwhile, Collins failed to put any daylight between himself and the failed toxic president, “nor did Collins back down from defending Trump’s policies” and his own abysmal record as a Trump puppet who backed Trump’s reckless war and voted to make gas, groceries, and health care more expensive.

AJC Politically Georgia: Jon Ossoff puts Mike Collins on ‘trial’ in fiery U.S. Senate debate
By Greg Bluestein, Tia Mitchell, Patricia Murphy and Adam Beam | October 9, 2026

KEY EXCERPTS

• U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff entered Thursday’s debate against Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins with a commanding lead in the polls, a fundraising advantage and signs that national Republicans were shifting resources away from his challenger.
  
  
• But you wouldn’t have known it from his performance at the Atlanta News First showdown, where he positioned himself as an underdog with something to prove.
  
  
• The Democratic incumbent used the debate to put Collins on the spot, challenging him more than a dozen times over his ties to white nationalists, an ongoing ethics investigation and his support for President Donald Trump’s agenda.
  
  
• Ossoff laid the groundwork for that strategy from the outset, declaring that Georgia voters were about to witness the “trial of Mike Collins.” And he spent the next hour trying to deliver the case.
  
  
• Ossoff even turned a question about data centers into a personal attack, accusing Collins of having “hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office.”
  
  
• And he invoked his mentor with a particularly bruising broadside: “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.” […]
  
  
• Nor did Collins back down from defending Trump’s policies each time Ossoff linked the two together. 
  
  
• […] It was Ossoff who spent much of the night keeping Collins in the defendant’s chair.

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