Jon Ossoff, a rising star in the Democratic party who has been cited as a potential presidential contender in 2028, has been re-elected to the Senate in Georgia, defeating Mike Collins, his Republican challenger.

The senatormade his re-election campaign a referendum on the Trump administration’s misdeeds, highlighting self-serving stock trades and business deals by the president and others in his orbit, as well as the consequences of the war in Iran and Trump’s trade policies on the finances of Georgia’s voters.

Ossoff has repeatedly insisted in recent months he has “zero interest” in running for president, even as he delivered a steady stream of viralspeeches that took aim at Donald Trump.

Georgia “rebuked the depravity, corruption and incompetence” of the Trump administration, Ossoff declared before a crowd of Democratic supporters at the Atlanta Hyatt, cellphones raised to capture the historic moment.

“If at times [over] these last two years, amidst the ceaseless onslaught of brutality and indecency, you doubted whether our republic would survive, let tonight’s results give you courage that the first light of dawn is on the horizon,” the senator said.

He added: “Remember that in living rooms and backyards, and at rallies across Georgia these last two years, together we’ve affirmed that our task is not just to contain one president’s wickedness, but to heal the brokenness beneath.”

This moment “is an opening not for restoration, but for reformation”, Ossoff said, a line he and other Democrats have used repeatedly on the campaign trail. “We must acknowledge that the underlying crisis gripping our republic remains, and that therefore our most vital work lies ahead.”

Ossoff decried billionaires building bunkers while AI threatens massive disruption, calling for pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and big tech to be brought to heel.

Invoking the legacy of the late civil rights leader and Democratic congressman John Lewis, Ossoff said: “We all lie in one American house, in one world house.”

Volunteers worked because they’re “so deeply troubled by the pain our fellow people are enjoying”, said the senator. “The terror of a child watching ICE take away her mother, the despair of a cancer patient losing coverage ... that ache in your heart, that pit in your stomach, that feeling is what reminds us we’re all in this together, that we’re not just one United States, we’re one united people. E pluribus unum; out of many, one.”

“Each day, Donald Trump digs the moral pit deeper,” Ossoff declared last week, accusing the president of leading “the most corrupt administration of all time, and everybody knows it”.

He was speaking at a rally alongside former president Barack Obama, to whom Ossoff has been compared as clips of his speeches – carefully recorded from a low angle – did the rounds on social media.

He raised at least $115.9m for the election cycle, many multiples more than Collins. The re-election was expected, with Ossoff never falling behind Collins in the polls.

Speaking at a Democratic election night event in Georgia on Tuesday evening, Andre Dickens, the Atlanta mayor, said his party cared “about whether you can afford your groceries; whether you can fill up your tank and make it to the weekend. That’s not left or right,” he said. “That’s life.”

Collins ran a campaign focused on immigration enforcement and anti-transgender policies that was badly marred by ties between campaign staff and white nationalists, neo-Nazis and far-right extremists.

Reporters from CNN revealed during the campaigning that Collins’ son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, who had worked with his trucking business, advocated white supremacist and Nazi views online. Collins’ former chief of staff, Kip Talley, and other aides had met with white nationalists Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, who had been asking Collins’ office to intervene on behalf of Charles C Johnson, a Holocaust denier and rightwing activist who was incarcerated on contempt of court charges.

Ossoff had repeatedly hammered Collins on these connections at debates and in campaign advertising.