In a deep dive into the unlikely possibility that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) will lose her seat in November, some voters in her highly conservative district expressed dismay that they have to admit that she is their representative in Congress.
According to the Guardian's David Smith, reporting from the controversial lawmaker's hometown of Rome, Georgia, MTG ---as the House member is commonly referred to -- is a heavy favorite to retain her seat in Congress in a district dotted with Confederate flags where "Three in four people are white and three in four voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election."
With one local voter offering faint praise of the first-term lawmaker while also acknowledging she is short on being an effective lawmaker ("She puts her foot down and stands on a situation. Not backbone because she's accomplished anything but backbone because she'll stand up face to face with people") other are not as pleased.
According to two-term city commissioner Wendy Davis, Greene slipped into office because no one asked the hard questions.
"The runoff was basically who loves Trump more? Although the media and some people had dug into this QAnon mess that she was a part of, none of the other Republicans made that an issue in their primary. Nobody had said, 'She's a little out there.' Nobody had said, 'What do you mean September 11 was a fake inside job?'" she explained.
According to the Guardian's Smith, Taylor Greene is not overly popular with local GOP leadership either.
"Local Republican officials here are said to be privately dismayed by Greene's antics since she took her seat in Congress, which have included calling for Joe Biden's impeachment and prison visits to rioters arrested after the January 6 insurrection. Mirroring their national counterparts' deference to Trump, however, they mostly remain silent in public," he wrote.
Julie Svardh, 49, a local insurance agent, didn't remain silent when asked about her representative in Congress.
"I'm embarrassed to be from her district. She's a national laughingstock. The things that she says, she doesn't know basic words. She couples off with the worst people in Washington and is very annoying. She's not bright and she's a bully. She's definitely not somebody you want representing where you live," she lamented.
She elaborated, "People blindly supported Trump in this area and so anyone who supported that person just got lumped in. People didn't read a lot or really look at the details and see what people stand for."
John Bailey, the executive editor of the Rome News-Tribune is also not a fan and laid some of the blame for Taylor Greene's election on the voters in a district that has become known as a "hotbed of extremism."
"Do you have that? Yes. Is that the minority? I think so. Do you have reasonable people who don't consume good information? A lot. I'm not saying these are dumb people, I'm just saying their information consumption is habitually bad," he explained. "I have friends who are intelligent people but their information consumption habits have been bad for a long time. They don't intelligently consume media. Top that on decades of 'those politicians don't care about us', top that on 'the media is looking for an angle'."
As for why voters in the district look the other way over Taylor Greene's harsh rhetoric, Bailey offered, "They're very forgiving of gaffes and other things that they may not like because this person kind of speaks for them. The problem that you're dealing with is rooted in apathy and rooted in this feeling of not being connected or not being important or not being represented."
