U.S. Rep. Mike Collins’ Senate campaign did not get off to an auspicious start when he misspelled his home state in a video announcing his candidacy: “Georiga, let’s ride,” the video concluded.
Collins, a Republican who represents Athens, was roundly ridiculed in the press and on TV news for the error. “Take it down! Quick,” one MAGA account begged on the social media site formerly known as Twitter. But the terminally online congressman did what any edgelord would do and posted through it. The video remained up days later.
While the error may be embarrassing for many of his constituents, it actually illustrates one of Collins’ strengths: a knack for drawing attention. Much like President Trump or another Georgia representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Collins specializes in “owning the libs,” which in our current outrage economy translates into free publicity and campaign donations—he claimed to have raised $220,000 in just 12 hours after formally entering the race despite getting knocked out of the spelling bee in the first round.
Collins learned his lesson after a failed congressional bid in 2014, when he ran as the pro-business candidate against ultraconservative fundamentalist Jody Hice. The Tea Party movement morphed into MAGA, and when the seat opened up again in 2022, Collins tied himself to Trump, despite Trump endorsing his opponent in the GOP runoff. Another once-establishment Republican candidate, Rep. Buddy Carter of Savannah, has done the same thing, even pulling stunts like introducing a bill to annex Greenland and rename it “Red, White and Blueland.”
Meanwhile, Trump frenemy Gov. Brian Kemp is backing childhood friend Derek Dooley, a political cipher from a famous family. While recent reporting found that Dooley did not register as a Republican in states where he previously lived, nor voted in elections where Trump was on the ballot, Dooley nevertheless embraced Trump in his campaign announcement earlier this week.
State Rep. Houston Gaines (R-Athens) finds himself in the same conundrum. The eighth-generation Northeast Georgian is friends with the Dooley family and allied with Kemp, another Athens native. Like Collins, he comes from a political family—his grandfather Joseph was a local judge, while Collins’ father Mac also served in Congress. Also like Collins and Carter, Gaines has learned that it’s live MAGA or die in the modern Republican Party.
While a freshman at UGA in 2014, he managed Democratic Mayor Nancy Denson’s re-election campaign. Two years later, he was elected president of the student government association, where he helped convince Athens-Clarke County officials to open an early voting site at the Tate Center—not exactly a Republican priority these days. During his first, failed run for state House in 2017, he refused to say whether he’d voted for Trump.
Gaines won the House seat the following year as the protege of the late Speaker David Ralston, who often warned his party’s right flank about the perils of overreaching. He quickly rose through the ranks and moved to the right as the years went on, sponsoring controversial legislation on hot-button issues like crime and immigration, such as bills requiring cash bail for minor criminal offenses, prohibiting local governments from cutting police budgets, banning sanctuary cities and creating a board to remove progressive district attorneys.
“I’ve been on the front lines in Georgia fighting the far left,” Gaines declared in announcing his congressional campaign. “Now it’s time to take the fight to D.C. and help President Trump deliver for the American people.”
That evolution is why it’s interesting that Lexy Doherty, the Democratic candidate, reacted to Gaines entering the race by questioning his conservative credentials. “If you squint a little, Mr. Gaines practically looks like a Democrat on some issues. But I don’t think it’s fair when they call him a RINO,” Doherty said.
“Now, we’ll see if his principles hold. He’s an ambitious guy, and he might realize that a sudden shift to MAGA politics provides the only path to victory in a Republican primary. It would be a shame to see him capitulate to MAGA and reinvent himself as a mini-Trump. Voters are so tired of fakery and flip-flopping.”
While others may enter the race, with more than half a million dollars raised in a matter of days and endorsements from dozens of sheriffs, fellow legislators and other elected officials, Gaines will be the prohibitive favorite, both in the primary and the general election. A blue wave is most likely coming in next year’s midterms, but it would have to be a tsunami of 1932 proportions for Doherty (or any Democrat) to have a chance in a district that leans to the right by more than 20 points.
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