Welcome to a special edition of At the Races! Throughout the 2026 primary season, watch for these updates from the CQ Roll Call campaign team on what you need to know for election day. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here.
By Daniela Altimari and Mary Ellen McIntire
April is shaping up to be a relatively quiet month in election world, before the primary season picks back up in earnest in May. But there are two contests Tuesday that we’re watching.
The first is the special election runoff in Georgia to fill the House seat left vacant by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation.
Former local prosecutor Clayton Fuller, a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump, and Democratic Army veteran Shawn Harris are facing off in the race to succeed the MAGA loyalist-turned-Trump-critic in the 14th District. Both advanced to the runoff after finishing in the top two spots in last month’s nonpartisan first round.
Republicans are heavily favored to hold the ruby-red district in Georgia’s northwest corner, which Trump carried by 37 points in 2024, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.
But Punchbowl News reported Monday that pro-Fuller outside groups are spending big to boost the Republican and juice GOP turnout. Democratic candidates, after all, have significantly overperformed in special elections across the country since Trump’s return to the White House last year.
Democrats, though, are also concerned about turnout: On Monday, the actor Samuel L. Jackson released a video urging Black voters in the district to support Harris, who lost to Greene by 29 points in 2024.
Greene, who first won the seat in 2020, resigned in January after a highly public break with Trump over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the direction of his “America First” agenda.
Tuesday’s winner will serve out the rest of Greene’s term through the beginning of January.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin …
Just over a year ago, an election for a spot on the Wisconsin Supreme Court drew over $100 million in spending, an extraordinarily expensive campaign for a judicial seat. Billionaire Elon Musk, who drove much of that spending, went so far as to suggest that the election “might decide the future of America and Western Civilization.”
In comparison, Tuesday’s election for another spot on the bench has been a decidedly quieter affair.
Liberal candidate Chris Taylor and conservative Maria Lazar, both state appellate judges, are facing off for the seat of a retiring conservative justice. Control of the court isn’t up for grabs, but liberals have an opportunity to expand the 4-3 majority they solidified last year.
In a debate last week, Lazar slammed Taylor as an activist judge, a nod to her prior stint as a Democratic state legislator, while Taylor said Lazar had brought a right-wing agenda to the bench, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
While Wisconsin’s judicial elections are technically nonpartisan, both parties have gotten more involved in recent years as courts confront more partisan matters such as redistricting and voting rights.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court could be asked to weigh in on the state’s congressional map soon, after a three-judge panel said last week that it couldn’t rule on a case challenging the current lines because the state Supreme Court had enacted it. Any decision, though, is unlikely to come down in time to affect this year’s elections.
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