Mac Collins (born October 15, 1944), American politician, was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 2005, representing the 8th District of Georgia (previously the 3rd district from 1993 to 2003). He was born in Jackson, and dropped out of high school to begin a concrete products business, expanding it into a ready-mix concrete company two years later, when he joined the Georgia National Guard. He later began a trucking company that is now run by his sons.
He began his political career in 1977, when he was elected to the Butts County Commission. He was immediately elected chairman by his colleagues and served two terms, giving up his seat in 1980 when he switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican. After two unsuccessful runs for the Georgia State Senate, he was elected in 1988 and served two terms there.
Collins entered the House as a result of the 1990s round of redistricting. Democrats in the Georgia state legislature, bent on getting rid of Newt Gingrich, dismantled his old 6th District. They merged much of Gingrich's old territory with the 3rd District, which had been based in Columbus and was represented by five-term incumbent Richard Ray. However, the plan backfired. First, Gingrich moved to the newly drawn 6th, none of which he had previously represented, and easily won election there. Second, Collins defeated Ray in an upset. Collins was reelected five more times without another serious challenge, and even ran unopposed in 1998.
In 2004, Collins was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for the Georgia Senate seat left vacant by the retirement of Democratic Senator Zell Miller, which went to Johnny Isakson. Collins' seat was filled by state House minority leader Lynn Westmoreland.
Collins lived in the Atlanta suburb of Hampton during his first stint in Congress, but has moved back to Jackson, where he is planning to run in 2006 in the Macon-based 8th District (the former 3rd District, which was numbered as the 8th during Collins' first 10 years in Congress) against Democratic Congressman Jim Marshall. Marshall's redrawn district includes none of the territory Collins represented in his first five terms, but three counties that he represented in his last term.
Collins is featured in Congress at the Grassroots, a non-fiction account of representational change in the south authored by political science Professor Richard F. Fenno of the University of Rochester.
