Primaries in Georgia and Alabama on Tuesday will end the suspense in a pair of high-stakes Republican primary runoffs for Senate, offering another test of President Trump’s endorsement power in both states.
Trump made a last-minute endorsement over the weekend in Georgia, backing Rep. Mike Collins (R) in the runoff to take on Sen. Jon Ossoff, who’s seen as the most vulnerable Senate Democrat in the country this cycle. His pick for Georgia’s next governor, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R), is also duking it out Tuesday to take on former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) this fall.
In Alabama, Trump’s behind Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) in the race to replace Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). Some polls, however, show Moore’s primary rival leading the runoff in the red state despite Trump’s strong grip on the GOP.
Voters are also headed to the polls in Oklahoma, where Trump has backed his pick to succeed Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), and Washington, D. C., where the races for the capital’s mayor and nonvoting House delegate are both wide-open as Trump leaves a lasting mark on the city.
Here are the races to watch in Tuesday’s primaries:
Georgia Senate race pits Trump against Kemp
Georgia Republicans on Tuesday will decide whether Trump-backed Collins or former college football coach Derek Dooley will face Ossoff in the competitive Senate race.
Collins led Dooley by about 10 percentage points in the initial May primary, though neither snagged the majority support needed to win the race outright, and he’s continued to lead in polls as the runoff approaches.
Trump’s eleventh-hour endorsement could cement the race for Collins — but it also reinforces the contest as a proxy battle between the president and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who endorsed Dooley.
Trump and Kemp have long feuded, particularly over the governor’s refusal to challenge the 2020 election results that showed Trump narrowly losing Georgia that year. In 2022, Trump backed a challenger to Kemp’s seat, but the governor prevailed.
The Georgia Senate seat is one of Republicans’ top pickup opportunities this cycle.
“Mike has to beat a Republican Opponent before he gets to Ossoff,” Trump wrote on Truth Social early Sunday.
Ossoff, who flipped his seat for Democrats back in 2021 after a tense runoff election, is now the only Democratic senator running for reelection in a state President Trump won in 2024.
Cook Political report rates the seat as “lean Democrat,” a step away from being a toss-up. Among nine competitive races, it’s the only one where a Democratic incumbent is defending their territory.
Trump, Kemp find common ground in governor’s race
Peach State voters on Tuesday will also solidify the race to replace Kemp as governor, which tilted into a runoff last month.
The term-limited incumbent endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R) to replace him over the weekend, snubbing Republican billionaire Rick Jackson. The endorsement aligns Kemp with Trump, who endorsed Jones last year, despite their picks being at odds in the Senate race.
Jackson, a billionaire health executive, made a late entry to the race and scrambled the expected three-way race between Jones, state Attorney General Chris Carr (R) and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who drew Trump’s ire for refusing the president’s demands to “find” more votes during the 2020 presidential election.
Whoever wins Tuesday’s runoff will go up against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D), who won the Democratic nomination for the governor’s mansion.
The race to replace Kemp is one of just a handful of toss-up gubernatorial contests this cycle, after Kemp fended off tough Democratic challenges in 2018 and 2022.
Alabama Senate race tests Trump’s grip on GOP
The Tuesday runoff for Senate in neighboring Alabama will offer yet another test of the president’s endorsement power in the midterms.
Moore is Trump’s pick to succeed Tuberville, who is giving up his seat in the upper chamber to run for governor of the Cotton State and won his own primary outright last month.
But neither Moore nor rival Jared Hudson, a U. S. Navy SEAL, snagged the majority of votes needed to win the May primary outright. Trump has worked to give Moore a pre-runoff boost, but it remains to be seen whether his support can tip the scales.
An Alabama Poll in the days ahead of the runoff showed Hudson leading Moore by nearly 10 points. And a Cygnal poll from the Alabama Daily News and Gray Television in May found that Trump’s support, while impactful for some, is not decisive for many voters in the state he won by roughly 30 points in 2024.
If Moore does win, it’ll add to a string of recent victories for Trump, whose endorsees have prevailed in high-profile primaries across the country this month — including in the races that have ousted Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.).
Business owner Dakarai Larriett and attorney Everett Weiss, meanwhile, are also facing off for in a Tuesday runoff for the Democratic nod.
DC voters select next mayor under Trump
The race is on to replace D. C.’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser and lead the nation’s capital through the remainder of Trump’s second term.
Bowser’s decision to retire teed up the first Democratic primary for the office without an incumbent on the ballot in two decades, and the race is wide-open. Whoever wins will be set on a glidepath to win the general election this fall in the district where roughly three-quarters of voters are registered Democrats,
Democrat Kenyan McDuffie, a former D. C. city council member-at-large, and Democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George, a D. C. city councilmember, were leading in sparse polling of the crowded field ahead of the primary.
Crime and public safety have emerged as chief issues in the race, with Lewis George working to portray McDuffie as soft on Trump – and McDuffie suggesting Lewis George is soft on crime.
Trump last year took federal control of the D. C. police department and deployed the National Guard in the city, claiming the capital had been overrun by violence and putting Bowser in the crosshairs of the administration’s crackdown on crime, which was notably down 35 percent in D. C. in 2024, marking a 30-year low.
D. C.’s next mayor may also find themselves navigating conversations about safety and more as Trump makes his mark on the district, including a sweeping series of renovation and beautification projects around the city.
Meanwhile, D. C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) is retiring after 18 terms as the district’s nonvoting delegate to Congress. Whoever wins that race will become just the third-ever person to represent D. C. on Capitol Hill since the modern office of delegate was set up in the 1970s.
Trump seeks to tip scales in Oklahoma gubernatorial race
Trump faces yet another test of his endorsement in Oklahoma, where he’s backed Republican Mike Mazzei to replace term-limited Stitt, though Tuesday’s race is almost certain to go to an Aug. 25 runoff.
Sparse polling ahead of the race has suggested Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) may have the edge, but Trump’s endorsement could tip the scales in favor of Mazzei, a former state senator and state budget secretary. Still, a crowded field of five candidates is expected to divide GOP support and prevent any candidate from winning outright.
Trump’s endorsement came as somewhat of a surprise and sparked pay-to-play accusations as critics questioned whether the nearly $70,000 Mazzei’s campaign paid to Trump confidante Roger Stone for consulting services factored into the president’s decision.
“I think it’s incredibly bizarre and absurd for anyone to think that Donald Trump, President Donald Trump, doesn’t make his own decisions about who he wants to endorse,” Mazzei told KOCO5 News.
Whoever ultimately wins the GOP nomination is all but certain to become the next governor of Oklahoma, which has picked a GOP leader every cycle for nearly three decades.
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