On Tuesday, Georgia’s 14th congressional district is holding its special election to replace one of the most controversial lawmakers of her generation – Marjorie Taylor Greene – after the MAGA firebrand’s surprise resignation earlier this year.
Having long been an ultra-loyalist, Greene had a spectacular public falling out with President Donald Trump last year, which culminated in him referring to her as Marjorie “Traitor” Greene.
Greene first broke with Trump during the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. She would also criticize House Republican leadership for not coming up with a plan to replace the expanded tax credits for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace.
But her biggest break would over the release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Greene signed onto a discharge petition filed by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to force the release of the files. She was one of only four Republican signatories of original petition alongside fellow Republican female Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
Unsurprisingly, all of the candidates hoping to finish her term have been seeking to hope to show the president they won’t follow in her footsteps.
The 14th district – which ranges from part of Atlanta to the Chattanooga, Tennessee, suburbs – is blood-red. In 2020 and 2024, Trump won it with 68.1 percent of the vote, according to the Downballot; Joe Biden received 30.6 percent of the vote in 2020, while Kamala Harris won 31.3 four years later.
That small little uptick reflected the larger trend of Georgia’s well-educated suburbs moving to the left while almost everywhere else in the country drifted right. The Cook Partisan Voting Index, which measures how a district performs at the presidential level compared to the rest of the country, showed that in 2023, it had a Republican +22 index, but in 2025, it went down to Republican +19.
Trump has endorsed Clay Fuller, who serves as a district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit. He also served in the Trump administration from 2018 to 2019 as a White House fellow.
But he’s far from the only Republican in the race. In addition, former Republican Dalton City Council Member Nicky Lama and former state Sen. Colton Moore will run as Republicans in the race. Retired Brigadier Gen. Shawn Moore is running as a Democrat. Polls close at 7:00 pm local time.
If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the race will go into a runoff on April 7.
If Republicans win the seat as expected, the GOP will grow its narrow majority. The party has only 218 seats in the House of Representatives after Greene’s resignation and the sudden death of Rep. Doug Lamalfa of California. Democrats are dealing with their own vacancy after Mikie Sherrill resigned her seat in New Jersey’s 11th congressional district to become governor of New Jersey. The Democrats currently have 214 seats.
But the race is important for another reason: it will serve as a barometer for where the general electorate might tilt in November.
Last year, Democrats flipped two seats on the state’s public service commission. In December, Democrats also flipped a state legislative seat in a district Trump won.
Democrats hope that Sen. Jon Ossoff, the only incumbent Democrat up for re-election this year in a state Trump won in 2024, can hold his seat. They also hope that they can win the governorship for the first time this century.
The race in Georgia will determine where the trends are going and if Democrats have a chance to break through in a crucial swing state.
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