Georgia votes in high-stakes election for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s House seat | Georgia
Tuesday’s special election for the successor to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district in Georgia will be a test of Donald Trump’s influence and could provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in the deep-red part of the southern state.
Republican former prosecutor Clay Fuller is likely to emerge from Tuesday’s jungle primary, where the top two candidates, regardless of party, will advance to a runoff with Democratic retired Army general Shawn Harris. The two will face a second round of elections on April 7.
Fuller has Trump’s endorsement and raised more than $1 million in Tuesday’s vote, but Harris, who faced Greene two years ago, raised more than four times as much. Although four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the Republican field is split among more than a dozen candidates; Among them is former state senator Colton Moore, a combative agitator who is to the right of most Republican lawmakers in Georgia.
Greene, also a firebrand on the right, lashed out at Trump last year, questioning his initial attack on Iran in June, then raising alarms during budget talks that ending health subsidies would devastate her constituents’ finances. The administration’s resistance to the Epstein files was the final straw; Trump and Greene turned on each other, leading to Greene’s resignation in January to avoid a contentious, divisive primary challenge.
Fuller, a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, is also a former Trump White House member and a mainline conservative and Trump loyalist by current Republican standards, which paved the way for Trump’s confirmation.
Harris, a soldier turned cattle farmer, won nearly 135,000 votes in a losing effort in 2024; this is a record in Georgia’s 14th district. The Cook Political Report still rates the district R+19, but Democrats have been overperforming in Republican districts since Trump’s election.
In a December interview, Harris told the Guardian that the field for naming Greene’s successor appeared open to Democrats.
“I don’t care who it is, but when we do our analysis — because Marjorie Taylor Greene was so far away — we don’t see that the Republican party, Donald Trump, or the local Republican party has found anyone closer to the center,” Harris said. “Because if you get someone closer to the center, guess what? You get Shawn Harris.”
Even before the war in Iran, Harris said people in Georgia were focused on economic issues rather than foreign wars and that Congress should work to lower food costs.
“The economy is very bad,” Harris said. “People know that everything is more expensive now. People know it. You don’t need to be told, you just know, you can feel it everywhere. Middle-class families are now trying to pay the electric bill, put food on the table, figure out how to pay their rent or mortgage.”
