Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms are linking arms on the general election campaign trail in Georgia as their respective GOP opponents in the Senate and gubernatorial races are locked in primary runoff elections.
For the next three weeks, Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial candidates, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and businessman Rick Jackson, and Republican senate candidates, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) and former football coach Derek Dooley, will be locked in runoffs to see who wins the GOP nominations for each respective race. As the GOP candidates face off ahead of the June 16 runoff date, Ossoff and Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, are painting the runoff gap between themselves and their opponents as a display of Democratic Party unity.
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“Mayor Bottoms and I will be proceeding together, united and determined,” Ossoff told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ossoff and Bottoms are set to hold their first rally together on Sunday in Atlanta as they begin their general election campaigning. The two candidates will center the voter turnout event around economic and healthcare-related issues, according to CBS News.
“We are proceeding with unity,” Ossoff told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We are proceeding with determination. We are united in our shared belief that Georgia and the nation are in a state of crisis.”
Despite facing half a dozen primary challengers, Bottoms won over 56% of the Democratic primary vote on May 19. She avoided a runoff by 6 percentage points, catapulting her to the general election. Ossoff did not face any primary challengers.
On the GOP side of the primaries, Trump-endorsed Jones received the most votes in the GOP gubernatorial race with 38%. Because he did not win a majority of the votes, Jones will face off against Jackson, who received over 33% of the primary vote, in the June runoff.
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In the GOP Senate primary, MAGA-style candidate Collins received the most votes, garnering 40.5%. He will face Dooley, who is endorsed by Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) and received 30.2% of the vote in the GOP primary.
Both Ossoff and Bottoms are leading in their respective, limited general election polling by single-digit margins. But Trump won Georgia in 2024, with 50.7% of the vote compared to Democrat Kamala Harris’s 48.5%. Kemp, who is term-limited, has also been a popular governor in the Peach State, making it a closely watched battleground in these 2026 elections.
