Ossoff presses Collins over ex-staffer's racist posts

Georgia Republicans express concern over Collins’s associations with extremists

Sen. Jon Ossoff on Thursday condemned a report by The Washington Post detailing racist social media posts allegedly shared by a former staffer to his Republican challenger, Rep. Mike Collins, calling the revelations “stunning” and “disgraceful and disqualifying.” The Georgia Democrat demanded that Collins hold an immediate press conference and release all communications between his office and white supremacists.

Ossoff said the reporting “confirmed yet more extensive ties between Congressman Mike Collins and white nationalism, and Congressman Mike Collins and neo-Nazi ideology,” and said it “should shock the conscience of every Georgian.” The senator’s comments added to a series of controversies that have shadowed Collins’s Senate bid in the November midterm contest.

According to The Washington Post, Preston Parra, 24, shared images on his X account in June and July depicting a swastika and one showing Parra in Ku Klux Klan robes. The Washington Post reported that the posts remain online alongside others in which Parra repeatedly used the N-word, quoted Nazi song lyrics and used the phrase “White Power.” Parra, who has described himself on X as a “twink fascist,” responded to a request for comment with a racial slur.

Meyer Siegfried, a spokesperson for Collins, said in a statement that “Preston Parra has no affiliation with Mike Collins’ office or campaign. The posts are vile, completely unhinged, and Mike Collins unequivocally condemns them.” Siegfried also claimed there had been a “rise in antisemitism and hate among younger Americans” and “Jon Ossoff’s allies,” describing this as “equally abhorent.”

Parra told The Washington Post that many of his posts — including the KKK image, which he said he made using Grok AI — were “satirical.” He also said he was not a white supremacist, but added: “I do think that the white race contributes more to the world.” According to Parra, Collins was not aware of his personal X account when Parra worked for him because he had made the account private.

According to The Washington Post, Parra interned for Collins for two months in 2024 before working as a contractor for Collins’s leadership political action committee the next year. Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by The Washington Post show Parra was paid $7,700 for fundraising consulting in May 2025. Parra told The Washington Post he worked for the group for several months, shortly before Collins announced his Senate bid.

The episode is the latest in a series of controversies involving Collins’s associations with extremist figures. The Washington Post reported last month, citing CNN, that Collins’s son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, is a white nationalist and social media influencer with a history of sharing antisemitic material, Nazi imagery and posts from the neofascist hate group Patriot Front, which descended on Washington, D.C., on the Fourth of July wearing white masks and brandishing the Confederate flag. The Washington Post reported that Scheer is registered to vote at a Collins-owned property in Georgia, has appeared in Collins’s campaign photos and attended Collins’s victory party after the candidate won the Republican primary in June.

Collins, a trucking executive, has represented Georgia’s 10th congressional district since 2023. His tenure has been marked by recurring scrutiny over his associations with extremist figures, incendiary social media activity and accusations of antisemitism, which he has denied. He won the Republican nomination in June and now faces Ossoff in November’s midterm election, a race viewed as critical to control of the U.S. Senate.

Several Georgia Republicans told The Washington Post they were increasingly worried about what they see as a pattern of troubling associations and behavior from Collins. “In the south, we have a saying: You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” Debbie Dooley, a prominent conservative activist in Georgia and one of the original Tea Party founders who backed Collins’s rival in the primary, told The Washington Post. “Well, Mike Collins has got a lot of fleas on him.”