U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter speaks to the Golden Isles Republican Women’s Club on St. Simons Island on May 12, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA
Ever since Buddy Carter announced his run for the U.S. Senate last year, he has insisted that he is the Georgia Republican who could beat the Democratic incumbent, Jon Ossoff, in November.
On Monday, the Coastal Georgia congressman repeated the manta at Savannah’s charter airline terminal on the last day of campaigning before Tuesday’s primary election, “You have to put your best player on the field, the one who gives you the best chance to win.”
He won’t get that chance.
In the three-way race between two self-described “MAGA warriors” (Rep. Mike Collins and Carter) and one traditional Republican (Derek Dooley), he was the third man out. He lost to second-place Dooley by more than 46,000 votes and to Collins by more than 140,000.
A complete picture of Carter’s defeat awaits a detailed analysis of voting data. But an initial review indicates that while most Republican primary voters in Coastal Georgia loyally voted for Carter, a significant number went with Collins’ rancorous, acerbic, in-your-face brand of “MAGA warrior” instead of Carter’s toned-down version.
The Collins campaign aimed some of their candidate’s trademark spite at Carter himself, branding him on social media as the “squeaker” from Savannah whose colleagues “just call him ‘an ass.’”
Carter won the most votes in Brantley, Pierce, Wayne, Appling, and Effingham — the 1st Congressional District’s most Republican counties. But even there, in Carter’s backyard, Collins picked up an average of some 30% of the vote. And in Chatham and Glynn, the district’s largest counties, Collins received nearly 8,000 votes to Carter’s 17,000.
Had Carter collected a bigger share of the vote, he may have overtaken Dooley for second place and found himself in next month’s runoff.
Threading a needle
In seeking the nomination, Carter had a politically difficult needle to thread.
On the one hand, he argued that he was the candidate with the best chance to defeat Ossoff in November — a task that would have required him to win over moderate Republicans and independents.
On the other, he claimed he was the true “MAGA warrior” and in pursuit of Trump’s endorsement, defended the president’s every move. That included, to the ridicule of many Coastal Georgia Republicans, defending his legislation, “Red, White and Blueland,” to acquire Greenland and more recently, predicting that the soaring prices at the gas pump and in the grocery store due to the war with Iran would be short-lived.
As recently as Saturday, he was still telling reporters that he hoped Trump would endorse him.
‘Tough for somebody outside Atlanta’
As the clock wound down to the final day of voting on Tuesday, Carter was left to reckon with the financial cost of his Senate bid.
His campaign had spent more $8.1 million dollars by the end of last month, including at least $3 million in his own funds, according to the Federal Election Commission. That works out to more than $35 apiece for each of the 229,030 votes he went on to win.
He was also left to ponder the political travails caused by geography.
“Let’s face it, y’all know this. It’s tough for somebody outside the Atlanta area,” he told reporters in Atlanta on Monday at the conclusion of his six-city fly-around. He went on:
“There truly are two Georgias. There’s Atlanta and everywhere else, and it’s been tough for somebody from Coastal Georgia to get better known in the Atlanta area, where the density is.”
In his brief concession speech at a restaurant in Sandy Springs, north of Atlanta, geography appeared to get the best of Carter again.
“Savannah is my home,” said the congressman who grew up in Garden City and later moved to Pooler then more recently, to St. Simons. “It’s where I’ve lived all my life, where I intend to live the rest of my life.”
He quickly added: “We did move down to St. Simons recently, but it’s still Savannah, and it will always be Savannah.”
This article first appeared on The Current and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
