WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley on Monday joined a crowded Republican field aiming to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia next year, a race Republicans hope will expand their majority in the chamber.
Dooley, 57, who is backed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp, touted his readiness to work with President Donald Trump in an announcement that called for low taxes, smaller government, conservative social values and results for Georgians.
“I’m going to work with President Trump, fight for you and always put Georgia first,” Dooley said in a two-minute video.
Dooley, the son of legendary University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley, has never held public office. He joins a race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination that includes two sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Buddy Carter and Mike Collins.
Republicans, who have repeatedly lost U.S. Senate contests in Georgia in recent years, hope to claim Ossoff’s seat to expand their 53-47 seat majority in the Senate during a cycle that traditionally punishes the party of the sitting president.
Georgia is one of six Senate races that are seen as competitive by political analysts. The other five are in Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and North Carolina.
Democrats face an uphill battle in capturing control of the chamber, as they would need to defend seats in Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire where incumbents are retiring and flip at least four Republican-held seats for a majority.
They are seen as having better odds of capturing the House of Representatives, though efforts underway in heavily Republican Texas to redraw district lines could dim their chances in that chamber as well.
Georgia Republicans had sought to persuade Kemp to run against Ossoff, but the popular two-term governor declined to enter the race.
“The latest addition to Georgia’s messy and chaotic GOP primary is a failed football coach who has only ever spoken out to cheerlead Medicaid cuts that hurt Georgians,” the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said in a statement.
Dooley was head football coach at the University of Tennessee and Louisiana Tech University. He also has coached in the National Football League.
Ossoff unseated former Senator David Perdue in a run-off following the November 2020 election. Georgia’s other U.S. senator, Democrat Raphael Warnock, defeated former Republican Senator Kelley Loeffler in the 2020 run-off and overcame a challenge from Republican Herschel Walker in a 2022 run-off.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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