Ministers demand clarity from Mike Collins on white supremacy

Social media posts by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins and his associates have become a target of Sen. Jon Ossoff and his allies.

U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, who hopes to unseat Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent, has a history of edgy online posts.

The people around him have sometimes crossed a line in their own posts.

During the GOP primary, Collins fired a campaign staffer who had mocked the wife of an adviser to a PAC supporting one of Collins’ Republican opponents after she said she had been sexually assaulted.

In 2024, Collins himself acknowledged “potentially inappropriate behavior” in a video he had shared about anti-Israel protesters. A counterprotester is on screen making ape-like gestures and noises at a Black woman, and Collins later said it was not his intent to “glorify” such behavior.

Now, Ossoff is turning the spotlight on Collins’ family.

David Alan Scheer II, Collins’ son-in-law, is a prolific online poster who has amassed a significant following on multiple platforms.

Last month, CNN reported that many of Scheer’s posts promoted white nationalism and antisemitism, including one last year about the financial influence of Jews on the U.S. government. Scheer wrote in his Telegram post that the included infographic had been prepared by his wife, Collins’ daughter.

“This man is a known bigot and antisemite,” Ossoff said in a virtual interview with reporters late last week. He called on Collins to apologize “for his extensive and well-documented ties to white nationalists and neo-Nazi ideology.”

Later that day, during a news conference about health care, Collins faced a flurry of questions about the issues raised by Ossoff and abruptly canceled the event.

On Monday, two Black ministers held another news conference to demand that Collins clarify where he stands on white supremacy.

Rev. Gerald Durley, a retired pastor who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., said he would never claim Collins supports white nationalist ideology.

“However, I do join with countless others for him to publicly denounce the political position of white nationalists,” Durley said outside Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta. “Georgia cannot send a man to Washington to represent all of the people of Georgia who will not disclaim the allegations that he is a white nationalist sympathizer.”

Rev. Timothy McDonald III, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church, said that as a native Georgian he knows racism when he sees it.

He said Ossoff had his vote, yet he called on Collins to clarify “what you think about white supremacy or Christian nationalism or black folk or anybody non-white … . Tell us what you believe so that all of Georgia can make an intelligent choice come this November.”

Scheer’s online life brings the controversy to Collins’ doorstep. CNN noted that Collins’ daughter lives with her husband on property owned by Collins.

Scheer has promoted the group Patriot Front, according to CNN.

Last year, Scheer called Benjamin Netanyahu a “satanic warmongering Zionist piece of garbage” for bombing Iran and trying to draw America into the conflict. Scheer said in his June 17, 2025 video on Instagram that the Israeli leader was trying to “pull the Holocaust card and say he’s preventing a nuclear Holocaust because the Jewish people are victims of everything, apparently.”

The next day, Scheer posted an image of a couple embracing three young children as a statue of an eagle enfolds them. The picture is overlaid with the words, “I want to make babies Not die for Israel”

Scheer wrote in his accompanying post: “If you haven’t noticed, we all have a common enemy.”

The image matches a Nazi propaganda poster published between 1933 and 1940, according to the Library of Congress. The title, “Die NSDAP sichert die Volksgemeinschaft,” roughly translates to “the Nazi Party protects and secures the national community.” The word “Volksgemeinschaft” has racial overtones.

Collins set the record straight Monday, saying in a statement to Capitol Beat that no one speaks for him, including Scheer.

“He has had no role in my campaign whatsoever,” Collins said, “and I don’t believe or support those views and I have always condemned racism and antisemitism regardless of the source.”

Collins said he is for safer cities, affordable gas and groceries and more opportunities for hard-working Georgians. He called Ossoff a “trust fund socialist” pushing a “far left extreme agenda.”