Will voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District elect a replacement for Marjorie Taylor Greene tonight? Or will the 17-person field in this all-in special election end in a runoff two months from now?
Donald Trump certainly hopes for the former. The president has thrown his full support behind Clay Fuller, hoping to restore one of the few seats that separates Republicans from Democrats as the House majority party:
Trump is backing Clay Fuller, one of the 12 Republican candidates in the race.
Trump teamed up with Fuller, the district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, during a stop in the district last month. Speaking ahead of the president at an event in Rome, Georgia, Fuller described himself as a “MAGA warrior.”
Fuller is also backed by the politically potent and deep-pocketed fiscally conservative group the Club for Growth.
Also running is former state Sen. Colton Moore, a vocal Trump supporter who enjoys plenty of support from the far right.
Democrats have five candidates in the race, but one in particular may give Republicans trouble tonight:
Among the three Democrats running for the seat is retired Army Brigadier Gen. Shaw Harris, the Democratic nominee who lost to Greene in 2024. With $4.3 million raised, Harris is the fundraising champion among all 17 candidates.
While Fuller is considered the favorite thanks to Trump’s endorsement, with just three Democrats in the race, Harris has a shot of securing one of the two runoff spots if no candidate tops the 50% threshold in the primary.
Harris is hoping for a fluke result, thanks to special-election turnout models and an overstuffed GOP field. A runoff between Harris and any Republican would likely be futile in a normal turnout model, so he has to hope that his money can provide a very unusual result in this R+19 district. Harris has also qualified for the May 19 primary for the next term’s general election, although his prospects in GA-14 are slim to none:
The winner will serve out the remaining months of Greene’s term. But if they want to remain in Congress beyond next January, they will have to run again. Republicans and Democrats seeking a full two-year term are set for a May 19 party primary, and possibly a June 16 party runoff, before advancing to the general election in November.
Last week, 10 Republicans and Harris qualified to run in November’s election for a full two-year term. That includes Fuller, as well as Moore, a former state senator and favorite of far-right activists who drew attention for a vociferous attack on Trump’s prosecution in Georgia for alleged election interference.
Basically, Trump and the GOP need Fuller to win outright today for lots of reasons. It would save the GOP some money and attention for a runoff, for one thing, which is reason enough to try to rally voters to a single candidate. In this case, though, the difficulties of leaving Republicans one vote short in the House over the next couple of months is now patently obvious, with Democrats planning more war-powers votes and the ongoing DHS shutdown. Mike Johnson literally needs every vote he can get, which Taylor Greene knew full well when she quit in a huff two months ago and disappeared back into political Oblivion.
We’ll have live results as they emerge, thanks to our partners at DecisionDesk HQ. Keep checking back to see how the race unfolds. Polls close tonight at 7 pm ET, so we should start seeing those results soon.
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