(Tribune News Service) — President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that he will nominate former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a longtime political ally who represented a north Georgia seat in Congress, to join his Cabinet as head of the sprawling Department of Veterans Affairs.

Collins, a Gainesville lawyer and chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, was one of Trump’s biggest defenders in the U.S. House during Democratic-led impeachment hearings, and he tried to parlay that platform into an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 2020.

He also grew personally close with the president over the years and — almost as importantly — his inner circle of advisers. Donald Trump Jr. is particularly close with Collins, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has also vouched for him.

If he wins Senate approval, Collins will head an agency with roughly 285,000 employees, 172 hospitals and 1,138 health care facilities that is charged with providing care to the nation’s 8.3 million veterans.

Trump said in a statement that Collins will be a “great advocate” for military veterans and their families. Collins’ allies quickly framed him as a noncontroversial pick for the coveted position.

“He’s an Air Force veteran with a heart of service,” said Chip Lake, a longtime Collins friend. “A home run that should sail through the confirmation process.”

The decision means Collins is unlikely to run for the U.S. Senate or governor in 2026, when both jobs will be on the ballot. Collins regularly sidestepped talk of his political future, saying his focus was making “45 into 47″ in a reference to Trump’s comeback bid.

Collins wouldn’t be the first Georgian to lead the agency. Shortly after Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, he put Democrat Max Cleland in charge of what was then known as the Veterans Administration.

The fast-talking son of a Georgia state trooper, Collins spent 10 years as a Baptist preacher at a Gainesville church. In 2008, he did a tour in Iraq where he ministered to young soldiers coping with the horrors of war.

He was serving in the Georgia Legislature at the time, and after internal debate, House Republican leaders let him vote by proxy for his old friend David Ralston to serve as the chamber’s speaker.

Though Collins is a fierce conservative, he has built relationships across the aisle. He and Hakeem Jeffries, now the House Democratic leader, worked together on a number of compromise measures, including an overhaul of criminal justice laws.

But in more recent years, he’s built a reputation as one of Trump’s most ardent loyalists. Collins became a household name among the president-elect’s supporters and a fixture on Fox News during the 2019 impeachment proceedings as he jousted with Democrats.

When U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson announced in 2019 that he would step down from office before his term ended, Collins and his allies pressed Gov. Brian Kemp to pick him for the open seat. Trump, too, privately pressed Kemp to tap the veteran lawmaker.

But after Kemp bypassed the Gainesville Republican for financial executive Kelly Loeffler, Collins ran for the seat anyway, stoking a deep internal GOP rift. Over the next year, the special election became a de facto primary as the rivals competed for Trump’s blessing.

Trump never endorsed either, though he lavished praise on both. Collins finished third in the jumbled special election, behind Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock, a pastor and first-time candidate. Warnock bested Loeffler in a runoff nine weeks later to win the seat.

Collins, meanwhile, became the Trump campaign’s go-to Georgia attorney during the GOP effort to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory. But he steered clear of seeking Georgia office in 2022, even as Trump made Kemp and several of his allies top targets.

It proved to be a wise move, as the governor and three other GOP incumbents trounced Trump-backed challengers and defeated Democrats in November. Collins, meanwhile, has remained a staunch Trump advocate and a fixture at his campaign events across the state.

Standing at a lanky 6-foot-4, Collins took particular delight in working the crowds at Trump rallies and mixing it up on different media outlets. In a late October interview on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Politically Georgia” podcast, he predicted Trump will benefit from a different approach.

“My hope is that Republicans start realizing that elections aren’t every two years. They’re every day. Democrats have done a really good job working on this every day, while Republicans gear up in election years,” he said. “We need to change that mindset.”

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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