Election will be a test of Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in the southern state
A special election for the successor to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district in Georgia on Tuesday will be a test of Donald Trump’s sway, and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of the southern state.
Republican former prosecutor Clay Fuller is likely to come out of Tuesday’s jungle primary, in which the top two candidates go to a runoff regardless of party, alongside retired army general Shawn Harris, a Democrat. The two would face a run-off election on 7 April.
Fuller has Trump’s endorsement and had raised more than $1m leading into voting Tuesday, but Harris, who faced Greene two years ago, has raised more than four times as much. Even though four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the Republican field is fractured between more than a dozen candidates, including former state senator Colton Moore, a combative agitator to the right of most Republican legislators in Georgia.
Greene, also a firebrand on the right, broke hard against Trump last year, beginning by questioning his first strike on Iran in June, then by sounding alarms during budget talks that the end of healthcare subsidies would wreck her constituent’s finances. The administration’s resistance on the Epstein files was the last straw; Trump and Greene turned on each other, leading to Greene’s resignation in January to avoid a contentious, divisive primary challenge.
