As Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Rep. Mike Collins faced off Tuesday for the second and final debate ahead of the November election, Ossoff made clear he doesn’t intend to run for president in 2028.
“I have zero interest in running for president,” Ossoff said in response to a question from one of the debate moderators. “I’m not running for president, I’m running for re-election to the Senate.”
To ensure there was no ambiguity, a moderator asked Ossoff if he would serve a full six-year term in the Senate if he is re-elected. “Yes, I will,” he said.
With that out of the way, the candidates picked up where they left off after last week’s fiery debate, each questioning the other’s record in office and touching on data centers, the Iran war, and the economy.
Collins didn’t directly respond to a question about whether he would support the deployment of additional ground troops to Iran if Trump requested it. He repeated the White House talking point that Iran was on the verge of creating a nuclear weapon as justification for the conflict, and then shifted to asking Ossoff about child trafficking at “the border down there.”
As he did during last week’s debate, Collins also didn’t directly answer a question about whether he believed the 2020 election was “stolen,” as Trump has repeatedly claimed without any supporting evidence. Instead he placed blame on the current state of the economy on “Bidenomics.”
During last week’s debate, Ossoff referred to news reports that former members of Collins’ staff had connections to white nationalists and that his son-in-law had previously amplified white supremacist social media accounts. Moderator Faith Jessie asked Collins on Tuesday: “Are you a white nationalist, and what do you say to Black Georgians who question whether you will represent them?”
Collins replied that he condemned hate speech of any kind, calling it “abhorrent.” Both parties have problems with anti-Semitism, he added. “These people, these young people, feel like they're forgotten, and they're just lashing out,” he continued. “And this hate speech has got to stop. And we've got to educate them. We've got to help them by giving them opportunities.”
Ossoff challenged Collins for failing “to stop someone under your own roof from disseminating neo-Nazi propaganda while you run for the Senate,” calling him “weak.”
On the Iran war, moderator Rick Bluestein pointed out that while Ossoff had called the war “disastrous,” he had voted to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.
Ossoff replied that Rubio had been “a deep disappointment, but not as deep a disappointment as Secretary Hegseth, who has lied repeatedly about the war in Iran.” He added that Collins had continued to defend the conflict. “I think that Georgians deserve to know, Congressman, how this war has helped them,” he said. “Iran still has its uranium, its drones, its missiles. How has this war helped Georgians?”
Collins accused Ossoff of being “for Iran” and supporting Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
“Mike Collins is raising a senate candidate in Michigan when the question is — and a question that Georgians deserve to hear an answer to — is how this war has been in our interests,” Ossoff replied.
Both candidates were asked what they would do to help Georgians struggling with affordability.
“We're going to repeal the tariffs that have driven grocery prices to their record high. We're going to end the disastrous war Mike Collins supported that has triggered a global energy crisis and driven diesel to its all-time high,” Ossoff said. “And we're going to repeal the Medicaid cuts and the cuts that allowed health insurance premiums to double for more than a million Georgians.”
Collins said he wanted to see the country “continue down the road of energy independence. That's the main thing that we can do. It is to make sure that we produce our own products right here, and then we don't have to depend on all these foreign countries that hate us to send us their oil or their finished products.” He praised the Trump administration for fast-tracking an oil refinery in Baytown, Texas.
“We have to get healthcare under control,” he added, blaming the Affordable Care Act for high health insurance prices. “Healthcare is meant for the patient, and that they have control over it.”
The latest polling averages from Decision Desk show Ossoff leading Collins by nine percentage points. Early voting began in Georgia on Tuesday, and The Caucus has rated the race “Expected Democrat.” Trump will hold a rally in Dalton, Georgia on Friday to campaign for Collins.