Ossoff, Collins clash in second Georgia Senate debate: 4 takeaways

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) and Rep. Mike Collins (R) traded barbs in a Tuesday night debate, tangling over the Jeffrey Epstein files, the 2020 election and more.

Ossoff, the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state President Trump won in 2024, tied his Republican opponent to the administration’s controversial tariffs and war in Iran. Collins, backed by Trump, sought to paint Ossoff as more representative of “Georgetown” in Washington than Georgia, suggesting the Democrat is “using this as a platform” for future political moves.

With early voting underway, Ossoff is leading Collins by nearly 10 percentage points in Decision Desk HQ’s latest polling averages on the race, and Cook Political Report shifted the contest toward Democrats last month.

But Republicans aren’t giving up on a flip in the Peach State. Trump is headed to Georgia on Friday to campaign for Collins as part of a red-state swing to rev up Republican voters.

Tuesday’s face-off was the last scheduled debate in the Georgia Senate race, hosted by the Atlanta Press Club. Here are four takeaways:

Ossoff committed on Tuesday to serving a full six-year Senate term and reiterated that he has “zero interest” in a 2028 presidential campaign, despite chatter about the first-term senator’s political future.

“Yes, I will,” Ossoff said, when asked to pledge his commitment serving a full term if he wins the race in November.

“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for re-election to the Senate.”

Ossoff, who won his first term in a high-profile 2020 cycle runoff, has long denied speculation about a possible presidential run, though that hasn’t stopped observers from looking to the rising political star as a potential standard-bearer for the party.

Democrats have notably seen similarities in the political rhetoric and style of both Ossoff and former President Obama — who famously said in 2006 that he would not run for the presidency as he served out his Senate term in Illinois, but later backtracked and ran in the 2008 cycle.

Collins on the debate stage pushed back against Ossoff’s answer, saying “he is running for president. He’s going to be your DSA candidate,” in a reference to this cycle’s string of far-left Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) wins. Ossoff is not a DSA member.

Collins repeatedly sidestepped questions from moderators and his Senate rival about President Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

“Do you still believe that Trump defeated Joe Biden in 2020?” said the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein.

“Yeah, you know, Joe Biden went into office, and boy, Georgians paid for it. Look at what happened during the Biden years,” the congressman said.

Later, Ossoff pressed Collins for not answering earlier, re-asking whether Trump won the 2020 election.

“You know, the 2020 election. Everybody’s seen my, my views on that,” Collins said. “There was a lot of doubt in that election. Yes, Joe Biden was the president.”

Ossoff pressed that he didn’t hear an answer to the question, and raised it again later in the debate.

“You still haven’t answered tonight whether you believe Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. Here’s your third chance. Did Donald Trump really win the 2020 election? You want to answer, Mike?”

“I have said numerous times that Joe Biden was the president in 2021,” Collins replied.

Trump has continued to challenge the results of the 2020 election, when he narrowly lost Georgia to former President Biden and put pressure on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and other officials to overturn the results.

The candidates clashed over alleged ties and files related to Epstein, the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier who died in prison in 2019.

Collins said that ads for Ossoff were paid for by Reid Hoffman, a tech billionaire and major Democratic donor with ties to Epstein. After Trump launched an investigation into a number of Democrats with such ties, Hoffman said last year that he was “never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT,” referring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Jon, the call’s coming from the inside the house. The Epstein class that you’re talking about? I’m looking at him right now,” Collins said.

But Ossoff pushed back by pointing to Collins’s votes on releasing Epstein-related files.

“Mike, who on your team advised you to raise the Epstein files? You voted to cover up the evidence,” Ossoff pushed back later in the debate, noting that Trump is named multiple times in the Epstein files. “You should explain that vote to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims right now.”

Ossoff signaled he’s open to packing the Supreme Court, but stressed that the priority should be on a code of ethics for justices.

“I don’t rule out any judicial reform, but I think we have to take the long view whenever we consider anything like that,” the senator said when asked about the topic should Democrats clinch the Senate.

“I think our focus should be a binding code of ethics for Supreme Court justices, because the American public is rightly offended when they see Supreme Court justices accepting lavish gifts from people who have business before the court, or from people who have a record of ideological or partisan advocacy.”

As he ran for the office in 2020, Ossoff said he was opposed to adding more seats to the nation’s highest court.

“I think judicial reform is a prerogative of Congress, and what I don’t support is adding a seat to the Supreme Court because we don’t like the policy positions of a justice that has been confirmed,” Ossoff said at the time.

The Democrat also called on Tuesday for a “much stronger” ethical code in Congress, where Collins’s office is under federal investigation from the House Ethics Committee for alleged misuse of tax dollars.

Collins, though, said he’s “fully complied” with the probe and called it a “nothing burger” and “just a hit job.”