Republican Establishment and Billionaires Tighten Grip in Georgia Runoffs, Corporate-Backed Candidates Advance in Southern Primaries
Mike Collins, buoyed by Trump’s backing, won Georgia's Republican Senate runoff, while billionaire Rick Jackson bought his way to the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Corporate-aligned Republicans advanced in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Georgia, highlighting the party’s continued embrace of wealth and far-right influence.
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
In a display of the Republican Party’s ongoing deference to Trumpism and big money, Rep. Mike Collins defeated former college football coach Derek Dooley in Georgia’s Senate runoff. Collins, who benefited from a late endorsement by former President Donald Trump, now faces Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November. Collins’s victory speech focused on so-called party unity, a thinly veiled nod to the consolidation of right-wing power.
Meanwhile, the Georgia gubernatorial runoff saw billionaire health-care executive Rick Jackson outspend and outmaneuver former Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, ultimately securing the Republican nomination. Jackson, who poured over $100 million of his personal fortune into the campaign, touted his business credentials and unwavering support for Trump-aligned policies, underscoring the GOP’s preference for oligarchic candidates. Jones, himself endorsed by Trump, conceded after acknowledging Jackson’s early-voting advantage, further illustrating the party’s internal power struggles.
In Alabama, Rep. Barry Moore, a hard-right member of the House Freedom Caucus and another Trump endorsee, secured the Republican nomination for the U.S. House seat vacated by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is now running for governor. The pattern of Trump’s influence and far-right extremism continued in Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, where state lawmaker Mark Tedford and pastor-activist Jackson Lahmeyer advanced to an August 25 runoff, both having received Trump’s blessing earlier in the cycle.
Other GOP contests in Oklahoma saw former state Sen. Mike Mazzei and Attorney General Gentner Drummond move forward to a runoff for the governor nomination, with Mazzei enjoying Trump’s endorsement. Across the Southern primaries, Republican candidates with deep pockets and far-right credentials progressed, setting the stage for general-election battles that will pit corporate power and reactionary politics against any hope for progressive change.
