Trump-backed candidate to face Democrat in Georgia run-off to replace Majorie Taylor Greene
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Trump-backed Georgia congressional candidate Clay Fuller speaking after voting results were announced during his watch night party in Georgia, the US, on March 10.
PHOTO: REUTERS
ROME, Georgia – The Republican candidate backed by US President Donald Trump will advance to a run-off against a Democrat in the Georgia race to replace Ms Marjorie Taylor Greene in the US House of Representatives, after a special election on March 10 seen as a test of Mr Trump’s sway over his party.
Mr Trump’s preferred candidate, former district attorney for four north-west Georgia counties Clay Fuller, will face Mr Shawn Harris, a moderate Democrat who has sought to court disillusioned Mr Trump voters, in the April 7 run-off.
Mr Harris won 37.3 per cent of the vote while Mr Fuller topped a crowded Republican field of a dozen candidates with 34.9 per cent, according to Georgia’s Secretary of State.
With no candidate securing a majority, the top two will face off in April, with Mr Fuller favoured in the staunchly conservative district.
The race has drawn outsized national attention because it offers an early measure of Mr Trump’s grip on his base in a district that has been a stronghold of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and was thrust back into the spotlight by 2025’s public split between Mr Trump and Ms Greene.
Mr Fuller easily outpaced other Republicans, signalling Mr Trump’s enduring sway over his MAGA base.
He beat the next closest one, conservative former state senator Colton Moore, who describes himself as Mr Trump’s top defender, by more than 20 percentage points.
“Trump’s endorsement did the job,” said Professor Jeffrey Lazarus, a political science expert at Georgia State University, predicting that Mr Fuller would consolidate the Republican vote and defeat Mr Harris in the run-off.
“The smart money is on Fuller.”
Mr Fuller, who was a White House fellow during Mr Trump’s first term and is a lieutenant-colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard, told Reuters that he viewed the March 10 result as an “absolute win” even if he did not avoid the run-off.
Fuller supporter Brian Crisp agreed.
“With so many Republicans in the race, we were thinking he might get 25 per cent or 27 per cent,” Mr Crisp said at Mr Fuller’s watch party in Rome, a city in the heart of the district. “So he’s gotten way above that. And it’s looking really good for the next election.”
Mr Harris, a cattle farmer and a retired brigadier-general, faces long odds in a district he lost to Ms Greene by 29 percentage points in 2024.
He told his supporters on March 10 to get back to work on March 11 making calls and knocking on doors.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that a Democrat can’t win in north-west Georgia,” he told a gathering of some 100 people, who celebrated the vote tallies with hugs and back slaps. “April 7 is coming... We don’t have time to waste.”
Georgia’s 14th Congressional District is a mostly blue-collar corridor from Atlanta’s suburbs north to the Tennessee border.
Ms Greene won the seat in 2020 and quickly became one of MAGA’s most outspoken national figures.
She split with Mr Trump in late 2025 after she went against his wishes by pushing for the release of investigative files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The winner of the run-off will serve until the end of 2026 but must immediately campaign for the full two-year term starting from January 2027, beginning with a May primary that could pit many of the same contenders against one another again.
That race will be part of November’s general election, when all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate’s 100 seats will be at stake.
Democrats are aiming to take control of the House but face longer odds in the Senate.
The March 10 contest took place less than two weeks after the US and Israel attacked Iran, a move that poses political risks for Mr Trump and Republicans at a time when voters have made it clear they are more concerned with domestic issues, including affordability and healthcare.
Ms Amanda Reisner, 42, a surgical technologist from Rome, said she believed Mr Harris, who has been trying to court Republicans and independent voters with a message focused on cost-of-living issues, could defy the odds.
“He’s the first politician that got me out of my house, and I know he can go all the way on this one,” Ms Reisner said. REUTERS
