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‘The beneficiary of all this is Jon Ossoff’: Georgia GOP steels for messy runoff

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3 weeks ago

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Georgia Republicans are already bracing for their bruising Senate primary to continue past Tuesday night.

Once viewed as a clear GOP pickup opportunity, the contest to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has remained largely static for months — with no candidate fully separating from the field and President Donald Trump yet to get involved.

Many expect the contest to go to a runoff, interviews with more than half a dozen GOP strategists and campaign officials reveal. Rep. Mike Collins, the front-runner, is likely to make the cut, but it’s unclear whether he’ll face fellow Rep. Buddy Carter or former football coach Derek Dooley, who’s had a late rise in the polls.

That means while the candidates are poised to duke it out until June 16 for the GOP nomination, Ossoff has free rein to shore up his cash advantage and attack lines ahead of November. The Democrat, Republicans say, is beatable — but the path to unseating him gets more difficult if their own primary drags on.

“The longer the party stays fractured … that harms the chances in the general election,” said Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County GOP chair. “The beneficiary of all this is Jon Ossoff. All he has to do right now is continue to raise money.”

Cole Muzio, a conservative activist and president of the Frontline Policy Council who voted for Collins, said the nearly large faction of undecided voters “is wild for what was initially supposed to be the most competitive race in the country…. It is not a good scenario.”

With Trump still on the sidelines, the candidates have been largely left to battle it out on their own, exposing fault lines over MAGA loyalty. Collins and Carter, both allies of the president, have mostly aimed their fire at one another as they work to win over the far-right base.

Collins, who has the backing of the Club for Growth PAC, a major conservative super PAC, appeared at a campaign rally with Trump earlier this year, while Carter has presented himself as a “trusted MAGA warrior.” Carter has ramped up his spending in the contest’s closing weeks, but recent polling shows Dooley beating him in second place.

And that’s exactly where Dooley’s campaign says they want him to be.

Dooley jumped into the race with Gov. Brian Kemp’s backing — and he’s gained momentum in the final stretch by leaning on his status as a political outsider and emphasizing his ties to a popular governor whose approval rating is nearly 20 points higher than Trump’s in Georgia.

His rise is emerging as yet another test of Kemp’s political muscle against the party’s more hardline MAGA wing. The governor has joined Dooley at dozens of campaign stops. And Hardworking Americans, a Kemp-aligned PAC, is up on the air on Dooley’s behalf.

“I’m totally fine with the timing of where we are, because really all we lost is the D.C. chattering class thinking that Derek didn’t have a chance. I’m more than happy to overperform expectations,” said one senior Dooley adviser, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Traditionally, you want to be spending your money and peaking when people are voting or right before they’re voting, and that’s what we’ve been able to do.”

Dooley’s campaign declined to comment.

Collins spokesperson Corbin Keown said in a statement that “despite the field outspending Mike Collins 15-to-1 in advertising, Georgians have consistently shown that they want [his] conservative record.” Carter, in a statement, expressed confidence in his standing with voters and said “Ossoff is desperate to face one of my primary opponents because he knows their baggage would distract from his terrible record.”

Republicans are hopeful that Tuesday night’s outcome — especially if it’s a runoff — will finally force Trump’s hand on an endorsement, putting the national political spotlight back on the Georgia Senate race.

The Collins campaign is already looking to make a pitch for Trump’s backing after the results come in.

“We are definitely going to make the case starting Wednesday that it’s clear he’s the best candidate for the general,” said one Republican strategist close to Collins’ campaign.

Trump’s endorsement has already proven to have significant sway in Republican primaries. His efforts to run challengers against several state GOP senators in Indiana and against Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana paid off. His endorsement of Barry Moore in Alabama’s Senate race helped him become the new front-runner. And he’s fronting a challenger to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in what has turned into a very tight — and incredibly expensive — contest.

But even though all three leading GOP candidates for Georgia Senate have had meetings at the White House, they’ve had little luck getting Trump to weigh in publicly. That has meant that other party operations, such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee — which typically follow the president’s lead or wait until a nominee emerges from the primary — have also stayed on the sidelines.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some Republicans argue that outside funding will ramp up significantly once the primary concludes.

“Every race in Georgia will tighten between now and Sept. 1, and when it comes time to put resources together, Georgia will be in the fold,” said one Georgia-based GOP strategist close to Kemp. The Senate Leadership Fund, the top Senate GOP super PAC, has committed an initial $44 million in Georgia.

But in the meantime, the fractured primary field has started Republicans on their back foot while Ossoff continues to raise money. The Democrat ended the first quarter of the year with $31 million in the bank, according to federal campaign finance reports, and has largely allowed his trio of challengers to battle themselves rather than taking direct aim across the aisle.

“[The race] will tighten, I think, but right now, it’s looking a little gloomier than what it normally would just because Ossoff is building a war chest and we’re infighting and all these things,” said another Georgia-based Republican strategist, who is unaffiliated with a Senate campaign.

Beyond contending with Ossoff’s warchest, the Senate GOP candidates continue to face another hurdle: Breaking through with voters at the same time as the Republican gubernatorial race is sucking up all the political — and advertising — oxygen.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson, who are locked in their own monstrously expensive primary, have spent a combined $94 million in that race so far. Their television and digital ads, paired with an overwhelming amount of physical mailers, has made it harder for candidates in other races to attract Georgians’ attention.

“The challenge for the Senate race is you’re not going to see a slowdown in spending in the governor’s race come the runoff,” Muzio said. “Can any of these guys really elevate above the noise to make a clear message?”

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Biden’s Mexico ambassador was so frustrated, he almost ran for president himself

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June 11, 2026

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For nearly four years, Ken Salazar — the U.S. ambassador to Mexico under former President Joe Biden — grew increasingly frustrated with the White House’s border plan.

Salazar says he begged for a “border czar” to run point on interagency coordination; he never got one, and instead, the moniker was inaccurately and problematically affixed to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. He asked for the White House to openly call it a border “crisis”; the designation came too late.

Salazar became so distraught that by July 2024, three weeks after Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance, he decided to take matters into his own hands: “I should run for president,” Salazar told himself, according to his forthcoming book, a copy of which Blue Light News obtained before its July 28 release date.

“There was political failure to understand the reality of the crisis at the border, and the political consequence it would have on Democrats in the 2024 election,” Salazar told Blue Light News.

Salazar doesn’t want his party to repeat the past. His book, Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America, is part-memoir, part-manifesto. Salazar — the former Interior secretary, Democratic U.S. senator, and Colorado attorney general — makes a case for what he calls “a new North American alliance,” in which the U.S., Canada and Mexico integrate their supply chains, jointly patrol their shared borders and promote cultural and educational exchanges. He sees it as a revival of former President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress.

But the book is also a warning to future 2028 Democratic presidential candidates.

Salazar is positioning himself as his party’s immigration whisperer, meeting with presidential hopefuls and pitching them on his “borderlands platform,” which says the U.S.’ borders are “broken” and “must be fixed.” He said in an interview that he’s already met with Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego about his plan, and he has a meeting scheduled with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. (Spokespeople for Kelly, Gallego and Pritzker did not respond to requests for comment.)

Salazar never followed through with his plan of running for president in 2024. Although he dialed up advisers and operatives and drafted out a platform, the Democratic Party did not hold a mini-primary to choose its new nominee after Biden dropped out. Instead, Biden hand-picked his successor, Harris — a decision Salazar calls a “mistake.”

Salazar writes that he consistently petitioned the White House to create a “border czar” position, allowing someone in Washington to run point on the interagency response to the immigration crisis. Harris, as vice president, had been tasked with addressing “root causes” of migration, and she devoted her efforts to addressing corruption in Central America. Salazar saw that as insufficient: “But sadly, her designation in this position was having no effect on migration flows,” he writes. He pressed several White House officials, and even Biden himself, to create the position. The designation never came.

“[Harris] had been placed in charge of getting at the ‘root causes’ of migration, but many felt she had been ineffective,” Salazar writes, suggesting perhaps she hadn’t been given enough authority or felt that taking more responsibility on the issue would be “political suicide.” “For whatever reason, she had been unable to help with the border and migration crisis, even though she’d sat next door to the Oval Office for almost four years.”

A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

Salazar’s book arrives at a moment when Americans view President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement with widespread pessimism. A POLITICO Poll in April showed that half of Americans — including one quarter of his 2024 voters — said Trump’s mass deportations campaign is too aggressive. But his border policy is still viewed favorably, and Americans still broadly trust Republicans over Democrats on immigration — a fact some Democrats chalk up to a “Biden hangover.”

It’s likely to kickstart a fresh round of recriminations within the Democratic Party, on the heels of former first lady Jill Biden’s new memoir detailing her husband’s exit from the 2024 campaign. Joe Biden is also expected to release a new book soon, though a spokesperson clarified that “the release date has not been finalized.”

Salazar, in his book, is candid about the failures of the previous administration — and how those shortcomings provided a window for Trump to ride a wave of voter frustration with immigration enforcement back into office.

His administration colleagues disappointed him on other fronts. In October 2023, when Mayorkas visited Mexico, Salazar notes he pushed him for a consistent, White House-driven message on the border crisis. (“We used the word ‘crisis’ freely and often,” Salazar writes, “even if at that time the White House refused to acknowledge it as such.”) Salazar claims Mayorkas told him: “Ken, I have a lot on my plate already. I’m about to be impeached for all this border stuff. The Republicans have it out for me.”

Mayorkas declined to comment about Salazar’s characterization.

Salazar’s consistent efforts, and failures, to garner buy-in from the White House on addressing the border crisis led him to question how seriously his Democratic colleagues took the issue and how well they understood the U.S.’ relationship with Mexico. “I’m not sure this administration knows what they’re doing,” Salazar told his wife at the tail end of Biden’s visit to Mexico in 2023.

Finally, in June 2024, Biden issued an executive order that effectively closed the southern border, which Salazar cheered as a success. “This should have been a moment of vindication — after all, American voters were demanding action on the border — but it was too late, and images of an out-of-control border would dominate the closing months of the presidential election,” Salazar writes. (Last month, Mayorkas also implied the Biden administration should have taken that action sooner.)

The border was “antiquated, under-resourced, underdeveloped, insecure, and broken,” Salazar adds. “In this, Trump had been correct.”

It’s a warning sign to Salazar’s party both in this year’s midterm cycle and in 2028: Downplay voters’ concerns on immigration and the border at your own peril.

Salazar’s hope is that the Democratic Party’s next standard-bearer will take up his “borderlands” platform, which places the impetus for border enforcement upon all three North American countries. If no one does, though, he isn’t closing the door on a run himself.

Asked three times by Blue Light News if he’s considering a presidential bid in 2028, he demurred. “I can’t see the future beyond the reality that we have a November 2026 election, and a lot’s going to happen this year,” he said. “Looking ahead, I want this borderlands platform to be part of that agenda for the future.”

Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed.

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US to reach $41T debt ceiling as soon as late winter, forecasters predict

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3 hours ago

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June 11, 2026

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The Treasury Department could prevent a U.S. debt default for several months after that…
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Maricopa County official fears Stephen Miller’s group has taken over election office

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4 hours ago

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June 11, 2026

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Even the Republican county attorney in Arizona’s most populous locality is sounding the alarm on potential election meddling by MAGA world.

That’s the crux of a court filing submitted by Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell this week. For those unaware, Mitchell garnered national attention after Senate Republicans tapped her to question Christine Blasey Ford during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process after Ford alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager. Kavanaugh has flatly denied the allegation.

Two years later, Mitchell successfully ran for Maricopa County attorney, and she endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024 — in other words, she is not an opponent of the MAGA movement. So it’s noteworthy that she and her legal team are accusing America First Legal, the right-wing activist group founded by White House adviser Stephen Miller, of effectively taking control of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which helps administer elections.

The office is led by Justin Heap, who has egged on the Trump administration’s push to acquire sensitive voter data in Arizona. And the disturbing context to all this is Trump has openly declared that Republicans should nationalize voting processes and “take over the voting” in several cities — like Phoenix, perhaps.

According to The Arizona Republic:

In a June 8 legal filing, Mitchell’s lawyers asked Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney to rein in Recorder Justin Heap’s politically connected firm, the America First Legal Foundation, which it said has undertaken “an unprecedented power grab.”

“The Recorder lacks any explicit or implicit statutory authority to hire outside counsel — let alone a partisan organization — to serve as in-house counsel on ‘all’ matters under his ‘purview,’” Mitchell’s lawyers wrote.

America First Legal is advising Heap’s office as he battles the Republican-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in an attempt to claim official powers for himself. As Democracy Docket reportedthe dispute at one point allegedly involved Heap seizing election equipment and provisional ballot envelopes while votes were being cast in a local election in March, causing county supervisors to warn about “grave chain-of-custody concerns.”

The Arizona Republic said Mitchell listed several examples of America First Legal wielding unauthorized power in Heap’s office amid the dispute with the board:

Mitchell’s request, handled by the law firm of Snell and Wilmer, identified six examples of what she contends involves America First Legal going beyond Blaney’s intended role for them: litigating the power-sharing agreement with the board.

Now, Mitchell argues, America First Legal has claimed authority over all matters relating to early voting, told election officials to disregard directives from or seek advice from Mitchell’s office, threatened prosecution over drop boxes and sent a warning letter signaling new litigation against the board.

Let’s not downplay the crisis playing out here. The GOP-controlled Board of Supervisors and the Republican county attorney overseeing the largest county in Arizona, where the majority of the state’s voters live, are calling out the pro-MAGA county recorder, who stands accused of allowing a right-wing activist group, founded by a White House official, to have unchecked power over electoral processes. (Heap’s office did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.)

The fact that even conservative officials are sounding the alarm here shows how extreme, unprecedented and potentially threatening to democracy this situation could prove to be.

Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.

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