A special election for the successor to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district in Georgia on Tuesday will be a test of Donald Trump’s influence and may provide a unique opportunity for Democrats in a deeply red part of the southern state.
Former Republican prosecutor Clay Fuller is likely to emerge from Tuesday’s jungle primary, in which the top two candidates will go to a runoff regardless of party, along with retired Army Gen. Shawn Harris, a Democrat. The two would face a second round of elections on April 7.
Fuller is backed by Trump and had raised more than $1 million before Tuesday’s vote, but Harris, who ran against Greene two years ago, has raised more than four times as much. Although four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the GOP field is divided among more than a dozen candidates, including former state Sen. Colton Moore, a combative firebrand to the right of most GOP lawmakers in Georgia.
Greene, also a right-wing firebrand, clashed sharply with Trump last year, starting by questioning his first attack on Iran in June and then sounding alarms during budget talks that ending health care subsidies would ruin her constituents’ finances. The administration’s resistance to Epstein’s files was the last straw; Trump and Greene turned on each other, leading to Greene’s resignation in January to avoid a contentious and divisive primary challenge.
Fuller, a lieutenant colonel in the air national guard, is also a former Trump White House colleague and, by current Republican standards, a mainstream conservative and Trump loyalist, paving the way for Trump’s endorsement.
Harris, a soldier-turned-rancher, garnered about 135,000 votes in an unsuccessful effort in 2024, a record in Georgia’s 14th district. The Cook Political Report still rates the district as R+19, but Democrats have outperformed in Republican districts since Trump’s election.
In an interview in December, Harris told The Guardian that the field for Greene’s successor appears open to a Democrat.
“I don’t care who it is, but when we do our analysis – because Marjorie Taylor Greene was very far away – we don’t see the Republican Party, Donald Trump or the local Republican Party getting anyone who is closer to the center,” Harris said. “Because if you get someone who’s closer to the center, guess what? You’ve got Shawn Harris.”
Even before the war in Iran, Harris said people in Georgia are more focused on economic issues than foreign wars, and that Congress should work to bring down the cost of food.
“The economy is very bad,” Harris said. “People know that things cost more now. People know it. You don’t have to be told, you just know it, you can feel it across the board. Middle-class families are now struggling to pay the electric bill, put food on the table, trying to figure out how they’re going to pay the rent or the mortgage.”
