Earl “Buddy” Carter has been waiting for this moment for a long time — or at least since Brian Kemp declined to run and left the Georgia Republican primary without an obvious front-runner. Carter, who has represented Georgia’s 1st Congressional District on the coast since 2015, launched his Senate campaign in May 2025 billing himself as a “MAGA warrior,” a self-description that tells you most of what you need to know about how he plans to run against Jon Ossoff.
Carter grew up in Pooler, Georgia, earned a pharmacy degree from the University of Georgia, and built a small chain of pharmacies before entering local government. He served on Pooler’s city council, then as mayor, then in the Georgia House and Senate, before winning the congressional seat that straddles Savannah and the Golden Isles. His biography is the kind that works in a Republican primary: Southern, business-owning, rooted in a specific place, with a long paper trail of winning elections in Georgia.
The MAGA Primary
The May 2026 Georgia Republican primary shapes up as a three-way race among Carter, Rep. Mike Collins (another Georgia House member), and Derek Dooley (the former University of Tennessee football coach). Polling in early 2026 shows Collins leading the primary, Carter in second, with the race fluid and a Trump endorsement that hasn’t materialized yet.
Carter’s challenge is that Collins is running a similar playbook — reliably conservative, Trump-aligned, anti-Ossoff — and neither has a clear differentiation argument in the primary other than geographic home base and fundraising. Carter’s coastal Georgia roots give him a natural constituency in Savannah and the Lowcountry, but the primary electorate is weighted toward the Atlanta suburbs and rural north Georgia, where his brand recognition is weaker.
If the primary goes to a runoff — as it might without a majority winner — Carter’s ability to consolidate anti-Collins Republicans becomes decisive. He’s been in politics long enough to know how to work the runoff calendar.
What He’d Have to Do in the General
A Carter nomination would produce a fairly standard Georgia Republican general election: a reliable MAGA voting record against a Democrat who won by 1.2 points in extraordinarily favorable conditions. Carter voted against certifying the 2020 election results. He has one of the most conservative voting records in the Georgia delegation. He would drive base Republican turnout in rural south Georgia while hoping that’s enough to overcome Ossoff’s Atlanta metro advantage.
That’s the core problem with Carter as a general-election candidate: the “MAGA warrior” framing that wins a primary can alienate the suburban Atlanta voters — Cobb, Gwinnett, DeKalb’s edges — that Georgia Republicans need to hold to win statewide. Ossoff’s 2026 campaign will be built around running up margins in those suburbs while being competitive enough in rural Georgia that no Republican can simply coast on turnout.
What to Watch
Whether Carter can consolidate enough primary support to force a runoff, and whether Trump’s endorsement — if it comes — goes to Carter or Collins. A Trump endorsement is the single most decisive factor in a Republican primary in Georgia, and its absence by March 2026 means the race remains genuinely open. A candidate who emerges from the primary damaged and underfunded faces an Ossoff operation that has been raising $10 million quarters since 2025.