Georgia runoff election will fill MTG’s House seat and test Trump’s clout

Voters in northwest Georgia return to the polls Tuesday to pick a successor to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in a special election that is also serving as the latest pulse check on how much pull President Trump still has with voters who have backed him by huge margins.

Republican Clay Fuller, a cancer survivor and former district attorney backed by Mr. Trump, is facing Democrat Shawn Harris, a farmer and retired Army brigadier general, in the 14th Congressional District. They were the top finishers in the crowded March 10 jungle primary, but neither cleared the 50% mark needed to avoid a runoff.

Whoever wins will serve out the rest of Ms. Greene’s term and then turn around and run again in the fall.

The race has drawn more attention than an off‑cycle special usually would. That is due to Ms. Greene’s rapid rise in the MAGA world, her public split with Mr. Trump, and the razor‑thin 217-214 House majority that leaves Speaker Mike Johnson with little wiggle room.

It’s also another early read on the national mood heading into the midterms, where the president’s party traditionally takes a beating.

Democrats are increasingly optimistic about their chances of flipping the House in the midterms.

Mr. Trump’s approval rating is still underwater, and polls show voters, already concerned about affordability, are feeling the pinch of rising costs and higher gas prices following the Iran war.

Mr. Harris, who is running as a moderate and a populist economic message, has tried to tap into that anxiety, urging voters to give him a chance and vote him out in November if they don’t like what they get.

Even though Mr. Harris, who is running as a moderate and raised concerns about the Iran war, edged out Mr. Fuller in the primary — 37.3% to 34.9% — he’s running uphill.

The district is deep-red territory, and to win, he needs to combine strong Democratic and independent turnout with a crossover slice of Republicans.

He lost the district to Ms. Greene by nearly 29 points in 2024, while Mr. Trump won it by almost 40 points.

“I am picking up Republicans that say, look, I’m a Republican, I’m not down with MAGA. The Republican Party has left me behind,” Mr. Harris said on a recent podcast.

Regardless of Tuesday’s outcome, he is already locked in for the fall. He is the only Democrat on the ballot and won’t face a May primary.

Mr. Fuller, meanwhile, is hoping not just to win but to win big enough to scare off any GOP challengers in the May primary. In the final stretch, he’s been talking up manufacturing, fentanyl enforcement, and — above all — his loyalty to Mr. Trump.

“The No. 1 thing, especially once the campaign started, was, ’Are you going to have President Trump’s back?’” Mr. Fuller said last week on WLAQ radio. “When I’m knocking on doors, honestly, that’s what people want to talk to me about.”

“They want to talk to me about President Trump, my interactions with him, my conversations with him,” he said. “That’s really front of mind for the voters in Georgia 14: Who’s going to go up there and be 100% with Trump and have President Trump’s back.”

Ricky Hess, chairman of the Paulding County GOP, said Democrats are kidding themselves if they think they can flip the seat, and he brushed off the idea that Mr. Trump’s falling out with Ms. Greene has dented his standing in the district.

“There has not been a shift of people who liked Trump before, not liking him now,” Mr. Hess said. “That doesn’t really seem to be the case.”

He said the race is essentially a public‑relations fight, with Democrats hoping for a stronger‑than‑usual showing to argue that Trump‑led Republicans are running into real national headwinds. His job, he added, is to make sure that doesn’t happen.

For her part, Ms. Greene has stayed out of the race.

She arrived in Congress in 2021 and quickly became one of Washington’s most polarizing figures, fueled by her unwavering support for Mr. Trump. But the relationship unraveled after the 2024 election and blew up when she defied Mr. Trump on releasing government files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mr. Trump called her a “traitor.”

Soon after, Ms. Greene announced she was resigning, saying she had grown disillusioned with Mr. Trump and with a Republican‑led Congress she felt was too focused on foreign policy and not nearly focused enough on the challenges Americans face from the rising costs at home.