Trump-endorsed Republican advances to runoff in Georgia special election for MTG’s seat

Republican Clayton Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris are advancing to a runoff in the special election to serve out the remainder of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s term in Congress.

Fuller, a local prosecutor and Air National Guard member, is heavily favored in the April 7 runoff in the deep-red northwest Georgia district. He overcame a crowded field of Republican competitors with the help of an endorsement from President Donald Trump in early February.

But his inability to win 50 percent of the vote means the seat will remain open for another month, hampering House Republicans’ already-slim majority.

The election was widely expected to head into a runoff given the high volume of interest in the seat. The crowded special election drew interest from more than 20 candidates after Greene’s abrupt departure from Congress amid her high-profile falling-out with Trump. Greene declined to throw her support behind any candidates in the race, but her legacy and public spat with the president loomed large over the race to replace her in the House.

Harris, the Democrat, unsuccessfully challenged Greene in 2024. Despite advancing into the runoff, the retired brigadier general and cattle farmer faces a steep uphill climb to overcome the district’s conservative lean.

Georgia’s 14th Congressional District stretches from Atlanta’s northwest exurbs along the state’s border with Alabama and up to its northern border with Tennessee. Greene has carried the seat by massive margins since she was first elected in 2020 — a reflection of the area’s strong conservative tilt. The seat is expected to remain out of reach for Democrats regardless of the political headwinds Republicans face nationally this year as prices rise and voters sour on Trump’s agenda.

But Harris actually led the crowded field of candidates with nearly all votes counted. The Democratic candidates combined to win 40 percent of the overall vote in a district where Democrats won just 31 percent of the vote in each of the last two presidential elections, making this election the latest Democratic over-performance in a special election over the past year.

The runoff extends the seat’s vacancy in Washington, where House Republican leadership is eager to grow their razor-thin majority as quickly as possible.

But election season in Georgia, even for this seat, is hardly over. Several of the candidates who mounted special election bids have already qualified to run in the mid-May primary for a full term representing the district.

That includes former state Sen. Colton Moore, a hardline conservative and longtime Trump supporter who declined to step back from the race even without the president’s backing and finished a distant third in the race. Fuller is set for a rematch with many of the same figures he triumphed over in this special election, though he now enters that primary with the advantage of a nascent incumbency as well as Trump’s support.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled Marjorie Taylor Greene’s name.