Republican hopes of capturing a winnable Senate seat in Georgia were damaged from the very first day of the campaign, when a high-profile blunder left critics mocking the party's candidate, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The GOP initially viewed Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) as highly vulnerable when President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Mike Collins to challenge him. Ossoff, who won a special-election runoff in January 2021 and is seeking a full six-year term, represents one of the few Senate seats Republicans have targeted in a midterm map where Democrats are defending multiple incumbents. That optimism has since collapsed, according to the Journal's Monday report, and Republicans now worry that Collins could also cripple the prospects of down-ticket GOP candidates in November.

Collins' campaign stumbled immediately out of the gate when his launch video displayed the on-screen slogan "Georiga, Let's Ride" — misspelling the name of his home state. According to the report, the error turned him into a national laughingstock on social media, a reputation from which he has never recovered.

Further problems followed: a House ethics inquiry was opened, and reports emerged that Collins' son-in-law had shared pro-white nationalist material online. The negative headlines continued to accumulate while Ossoff built a national profile by attacking Trump.

The race, described by the Journal as "once rated a tossup," is now widely seen as leaning Democratic — a rare bright spot for a party facing long odds in its effort to retake the Senate. An August InsiderAdvantage poll of 800 likely voters found Ossoff leading 50 percent to 43 percent, with 7 percent undecided and a margin of error of 3.46 percent.

"With lackluster fundraising, ongoing scandals with staffers and family," Collins is "really having difficulty breaking through," Georgia GOP strategist Jordan Fuchs, who has worked closely with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told the Journal.

The Journal reported that "Collins's weak showing has sparked alarm among GOP strategists and pollsters that his run could weigh on other Republican candidates in Georgia, including the race for governor and contests for offices ranging from attorney general to insurance commissioner."

"There's a general concern that Collins isn't the right candidate or running the right campaign to defeat Ossoff," said Nathan Gonzales of Inside Elections. Georgia has recently featured tight, high-turnout statewide races — including Ossoff's own 2021 runoff victory decided by roughly a point and the state's narrow margins in recent presidential contests — a pattern that makes any drag at the top of the ticket potentially consequential for races decided by slim differences.