Jon Ossoff and Mike Collins clash in second debate ahead of November election

Democratic U.S. Sen Jon Ossoff and Republican Congressman Mike Collins met face to face on the debate stage Tuesday for their second and likely final confrontation before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

The two candidates for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat clashed over issues including immigration, the war in Iran and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein at Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Atlanta studio in a fiery debate that again veered into personal attacks.

Collins, who has represented Georgia’s 10th Congressional District in the northeastern part of the state since 2023, attempted to paint Ossoff as an out-of-touch elite who is more aligned  with Hollywood than Georgia.

“This is a race between Georgia and Georgetown,” Collins said. “Somebody that’s created jobs and opportunities right here in Georgia on this red clay versus a globe-trotting trust fund kid who got to the Senate and then at every turn has voted to make our life less safe, more expensive and worse off.”

Ossoff took office in 2021, flipping the seat blue after a close runoff. He targeted Collins as a “puppet” of President Donald Trump and bashed Collins for his support of the president’s tariff policy and war in Iran. Ossoff also hammered Collins over a House ethics investigation into government funds allegedly used to pay a longtime advisor’s girlfriend for work she did not do and a series of scandals involving bizarre and racist online posts from family members and former campaign staff.

Ossoff repeatedly pressed Collins to denounce his son-in-law, an online influencer who has posted antisemitic material from Collins’ property, according to the campaign.

“You stand here and say you’re going to be a champion for Black Georgians when you elevate to positions of leadership in your political organization people with ties to the Ku Klux Klan,” Ossoff said. “You want to explain that to folks across Georgia? Did you accidentally put people with Klan ties in your political organization?”

Collins has called the ethics investigation a politically motivated “nothingburger” and said he denounces all forms of hate.

Ossoff is the only incumbent Democratic senator up for reelection in a state Trump won in 2024. Bolstered by that win, some Republicans were optimistic that he could be easily defeated and his seat would help protect their Senate majority. Instead, Ossoff has maintained a steady lead in the polls, to the point where the GOP has reportedly considered moving resources to other states they feel more optimistic about. The Collins campaign denies this, pointing to million-dollar-plus ad buys from Senate Republicans.

Early voting is underway for the Nov. 3 election, where voters will determine Georgia’s next U.S. senator, governor, constitutional officers like lieutenant governor and secretary of state and other down-ballot seats.

Immigration

Collins was the primary author of the Laken Riley Act, which expanded requirements for the detention of immigrants charged with property crimes. The first bill signed by Trump in his second term, it was named for a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed in Collins’ district by a man who had entered the country illegally.

Collins, who has supported strict border security and deportation policies, characterized Ossoff as weak on the border and responsible for allowing criminals to enter the country, and for Riley’s death.

“If he’d have been in the private sector, he’d have been fired because he was responsible for that young woman’s death,” Collins said. “He allowed that border to stay open. He knew that border was open. He knew that criminals were flooding across that border down there, killing and harming Americans. He didn’t lift a finger on that bill. He only voted for it when it was politically convenient and he knew it was going to pass.”

Ossoff was one of 12 Senate Democrats who voted for the act and disagreed with Collins’ characterization.

“Mike, you know I voted for the bill,” he said. “You’re not just lying about my record. You’re lying about a young woman’s death because your campaign is in collapse.”

Ossoff indicated he did not regret the vote but he said he did find fault with President Donald Trump’s heavy-handed immigration tactics.

“It is right that immigration enforcement should focus on those who are convicted of or wanted for crimes,” he said. “If you’re in the United States illegally and you commit a crime, you’ve got to leave. It is also right that provisions of that law were overbroad, and we need to address that. But look at what Mike Collins and Donald Trump have been doing. They’ve been rounding up people with no criminal history, with no criminal record. They’ve been separating children from their parents. They’ve unleashed masked federal agents on the streets of our cities who have killed American citizens with impunity.”

War in Iran

Ossoff sought to press Collins on the war in Iran, now nearly in its eighth month and a key driver of rising fuel prices. Collins argued the war had made Americans safer by preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. According to the Pentagon, 21 service members have died during the war.

“We have been at war with this Islamic terrorist regime for over 47 years,” Collins said. “They’ve been killing Americans ever since. And they were this close to getting a nuclear weapon. And thank goodness we had the leadership to send people over there to take care of those nuclear weapons that they were trying to create.”

In response to a reporter’s question during the debate, Ossoff expressed skepticism that Iran was close to obtaining a nuke. He also indicated he regretted voting to approve the nomination of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was previously a Republican senator from Florida. The Senate vote to confirm Rubio was unanimous.

“Secretary Rubio has been a deep disappointment, but not as deep a disappointment as Secretary (of defense Pete) Hegseth, who has lied repeatedly about the war in Iran, I want everybody to remember that they told us last year that they’d obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, and then they told us this year that it posed an imminent threat and they had to take us to war. Both times they were lying.”

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