Georgia special election to replace Greene heads to runoff

Democrat Shawn Harris and Clayton Fuller, a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump, were the top two finishers in Tuesday’s nonpartisan special election to fill GOP former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat. The pair will face each other in an April 7 runoff.

Harris, a former Army brigadier general and cattle farmer, captured the largest share of votes with 37 percent as of Wednesday morning. Fuller, a former district attorney, took the second slot with nearly 35 percent of the vote. No candidate secured the 50 percent vote threshold required to avoid a runoff.

The seat has been vacant since Greene resigned on Jan. 5, following her dramatic break with Trump over his handling of the release of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as over the direction of his “America First” agenda and what she called his undue focus on foreign policy matters.

Republicans hold a considerable advantage in the northwest Georgia district, which went to Trump by 37 points in 2024, according to Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

“This is the one of the most heavily lopsided Republican districts in the entire state and in the nation for that matter,” said Carl Cavalli, a political science professor at the University of North Georgia.

While Harris picked up the most votes, Fuller hinted at his political advantage heading into the runoff in remarks on Tuesday night.

“I think the Republican Party is going to unite around us because they know that the Democrat is too dangerous,” he said Tuesday night, according to The Associated Press. “We can’t have a Democrat representing Georgia 14. That would be a tragedy for our community, a tragedy for Georgia 14 and a tragedy for the MAGA movement.”

The top vote getters were also the highest fundraisers in the race. Harris outraised everyone, bringing in over $4 million in the special election, while Fuller netted just over $1 million, including a $300,000 loan to his campaign.

Democrats largely came together to support Harris, who benefitted from a race that pitted a dozen Republicans against each other. He campaigned on a moderate platform focused on local agriculture and health care concerns and ran ads blasting “out of touch politicians” on both sides of the aisle.

A familiar name in the district, Harris mounted an unsuccessful challenge to unseat Greene in 2024. In the special election, he picked up the endorsement of former Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who declared: “There’s no such thing as a permanently red state or district.”

Fuller was backed by the conservative group Club for Growth and ran on being a “MAGA warrior.” The race was also a test of the power of the president’s endorsement: Fuller’s campaign was boosted by Trump’s support in February.

It appeared to have some impact. Fuller’s closest GOP competition, former state Sen. Colton Moore, a conservative firebrand and Trump loyalist, trailed at a distant third, with less than 12 percent of the vote.

Other GOP candidates posted results barely in the single digits and a number came in at less than 1 percentage point.

Despite the long odds his party faces, Tuesday’s special election appeared to buoy Democrats. “The race isn’t over….Momentum is real. The coalition is growing,” Harris wrote on social media shortly after the race was called.

Harris and Fuller are also among the nearly dozen mostly-Republican candidates set to run in the May 19 primaries to seek the 14th District seat for a full two-year term in November.