President Trump’s endorsements continue to be powerful in Republican primaries, and G.O.P. voters remain devoted to him — but his blessing is not always determinative, even in Republican races.
For the second time this month, my colleague Patricia Mazzei noted, the president backed the losing candidate in a Republican primary for governor. His choice in Georgia’s runoff — Lt. Gov. Burt Jones — lost to Rick Jackson, a wealthy health care executive who spent more than $100 million of his own money on his bid. Earlier in June, Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa narrowly lost, too.
Of course, the winners hardly ran as Mitt Romney-style, Never Trump conservatives (a brand that is all but extinct in today’s Republican Party). Jackson, my colleague Rick Rojas wrote, “portrayed himself to the state’s Republican base as a homegrown version of Mr. Trump,” an effort the president himself tried to embrace in a social media post.
“Congratulations to Rick Jackson, who very successfully campaigned on being ‘TRUMP,’ and won,” Trump wrote. He appeared to make a similar argument about Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor in Iowa.
And Trump did have other victories last night, with his choices for Senate prevailing in deeply conservative Alabama and Oklahoma, as well as in Georgia, home to one of the most consequential Senate races on the map.
There, Representative Mike Collins now faces the challenging task of unseating Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who has been an exceptionally strong fund-raiser.
Georgia, to be clear, is a highly competitive, even conservative-tilted state, and Democrats don’t waltz to re-election there. But Ossoff, a 39-year-old senator with a knack for making a splash online, is already stoking fevered Democratic speculation about what his future might hold if he does win in November.
For more on what Ossoff is up to, I turned to my colleague Reid Epstein.
Reid, thanks for joining. You and our colleague Patricia Mazzei have a new story out looking at Jon Ossoff. How did he go from endangered Democrat to formidable — front-runner? Can we call him a front-runner? — in a state that is often tough for Democrats?
While Georgia remains a very hard state for Democrats, just about everything possible has gone right for Ossoff over the last year and a half. Gov. Brian Kemp, the state’s most popular Republican, decided not to run against him. Derek Dooley, the Kemp-endorsed Republican, lost the Senate primary after Ossoff’s team quietly worked to undermine his chances. And Ossoff’s periodic campaign rallies, with his crisp analysis of what he casts as the ills of the Trump administration, have generated popular content on Democratic social media.
Still, Ossoff is no slam dunk for re-election. Just look at the voting patterns from Georgia’s primary election last month. About 150,000 more Democrats than Republicans voted in the state’s primaries for governor, but two State Supreme Court candidates backed by Democrats (including Barack Obama) did not win.
Definitely, and November is many political lifetimes away. Now that we know the Georgia matchup, what do you see as the key fault lines in this race?
Ossoff, with his emphasis on combating corruption, has made pretty clear what his frame for the race will be. In February, he helped popularize the phrase “Epstein class” to tie Trump and Republican donors to the disgraced financier. And he somehow managed to turn a video explainer about the pharmaceutical industry into highly viewed content.
For Collins, the argument will be simpler. He is with Trump and Ossoff is with the other liberals in Washington. He won’t be the first Georgia Republican to try this: Herschel Walker campaigned this way in 2022 when he narrowly lost to Senator Raphael Warnock.
Ossoff, like any savvy politician on the ballot this year, insists that his sole focus is his home state. On the scale of thirsty potential 2028 presidential candidates, where does he rank?
Let’s just say he is not out there guzzling Coca-Cola like the other would-be 2028ers.
Ossoff doesn’t do the podcast circuit, is not often on cable news, lets others handle his social media, has not been seen in early primary states and rarely does national press interviews.
And yet his reluctance to participate in the 2028 pre-primary hustle has made him different from the thirsty crew (they know who they are). His rally videos regularly spread widely on social media and leave Democrats wondering how they can adopt Ossoff’s message in races around the country.
Of course, as you and Pati accurately note, first he has to make it through November.
Matt Zdun contributed reporting.
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