Georgia’s 14th Congressional District is heavily Republican, but Democratic support has been higher than expected nationally since 2025.
The special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t over yet.
The race for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District continues in a runoff between Democrat Sean Harris and Republican Clay Fuller.
Democrats have repeatedly overperformed in unlikely places this year, such as President Donald Trump’s own Florida Senate district, but the height of the anticipated “blue wave” will be tested on April 7 in the Georgia House seat once held by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Democrats are pinning high hopes on retired Army Brigadier General Sean Harris, who they believe is ripe for political turmoil due to the worsening economy, unpopular war with Iran and President Trump’s declining approval ratings, despite the district’s strong Republican leanings. Greene, an extreme conservative, outperformed Harris by about 29 percentage points in 2024.
“If you get the right candidate, get the right message, get the right environment, yes, in a place like northwest Georgia … even a Democrat like me can win,” Harris told USA TODAY.
The 60-year-old livestock farmer once said the Democratic Party was the party of “hard-working people” and that his campaign had largely focused on these table issues. Than in the mountains along the Tennessee border where the MAGA heart beats loudest.
Georgia’s 14th Congressional District is located in the northwestern corner of the state, which skirts the Atlanta suburbs and stretches into the more mountainous Appalachian region that borders Tennessee. The country is rated 19 points more Republican than the nation as a whole, according to the Cook Political Report.
But this contest is one of the first in the escalating conflict with Iran, and he hopes it will become a wedge issue in the district for those already suffering from a crisis of U.S. affordability.
“It’s not a top issue, but I put it in the top three. The reason it’s in the top three is because when people go to the gas station, they see how much they have to pay for gas and diesel,” Harris said in an interview with USA TODAY. “Our district is 100% agricultural and that costs farmers lives due to diesel fuel and fertilizer costs.”
Clay Fuller, a Trump-backed former prosecutor who served in the Air National Guard, has not publicly wavered in the Republican Party’s confidence as he remains wedded to the president and his policies even after surviving a crowded primary and making it to the runoff.
Mr. Fuller could not be reached for comment for this story, but he emphasized in a previous interview with USA TODAY after the first round of the special election in March that he is not taking anything for granted.
“I want to focus every day on making sure I’m a warrior for the people who voted me for president,” he said.
Two Iranian war veterans vie for MTG seat split
The Georgia runoffs are among the first legislative battles between the parties in the shadow of President Trump’s war on Iran, which polls show is unpopular with many voters and divided among key figures in the Make America Great Again movement, including Greene, who has become a leading anti-war commentator since resigning in January.
The war has been a major dividing point between Harris and Fuller, with the latter giving full support to the president in a solo debate last month.
“President Trump’s actions against Iran have made our country safer,” Fuller said.
The 44-year-old Republican candidate served in 2024 at an air base in Qatar that was attacked last month.
Asked in March about conservative voters who are skeptical or critical of the war, Fuller emphasized that Iran’s reputation around the world is a key reason many Republicans continue to support them overwhelmingly.
He said MAGA voters are conveying a similar understanding to the president regarding rising gas prices, which Democrats are focusing on in battleground states across the country.
“They understand that there may be some issues with the pump, but they also know that the president has been handed bad cards from an economic standpoint since January 2025,” Fuller told USA TODAY.
“They know the long-term economic strategy that the president is working on, and they don’t panic over short-term things that will be forgotten in two weeks or a month,” he added.
President Trump hasn’t made it easy for Republican incumbents and candidates in Congress tasked with defending the war on the campaign trail by not putting their names on the top of their tickets.
In his prime-time address to the nation on April 1, the president briefly mentioned rising prices without giving a firm date for when the conflict would end.
Then, on Easter Sunday, he issued an expletive-filled threat to bomb power plants and bridges if the United States did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway vital to Iran’s oil production, before ending his online post with “praise be to Allah.”
Ryan Ward, an aspiring musician who voted early for Harris in Rome, Georgia, on April 1, said his biggest concern was the escalating rhetoric and actions surrounding the war.
“The fact that[Harris]is a military veteran is really great considering what we’re doing right now in Iran. The completely nonsensical situation there, he’s calm, like he’s calm,” Harris, a 24-year-old independent, said in an interview.
Ward said the Democratic Party has a “very bad branding problem” and said the party needs candidates who are more authentic to themselves “even if they say things that hurt people.”
It is that credibility that the Harris campaign believes will make the race competitive, in addition to opposition from independents, Democrats and Trump voters who feel that Trump has betrayed his campaign promise to avoid the outbreak of foreign war.
For example, Fuller declined a request for comment on the president’s April 5 online post, while Greene, who does not support Republican candidates, condemned the president’s Truth Social post the same day.
“I know him, all of you, and he went crazy, and all of you are accomplices,” she replied with an X. “I’m not defending Iran, but let’s be honest about all of this. The Straits are closed because the United States and Israel launched an unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling us for decades, no matter when Iran develops nuclear weapons.”
Why are Democrats fighting so hard in MAGA-defined districts?
Few polls have been conducted in the run-up to the April 7 election, and there are few projections that give Harris a chance of winning. Many conservatives scoff at Harris’ chances. But in other elections around the country, Democrats have fared significantly better in areas where Trump and his allies have historically dominated their opponents.
In six races last year to fill open U.S. House seats, including in conservative strongholds such as Tennessee’s 7th District, Democratic candidates topped former Vice President Kamala Harris by a wide margin in 2024.
In Texas, Democrats are making significant gains even in the weak state legislature, with Democrats running for the state Senate winning 9% of seats, equivalent to a 31-point swing, after Trump led the region with 17% last time.
Democrats are highlighting these trends to justify their glimmering hopes in Georgia, where Fuller is a lesser-known candidate and seen as a different talent compared to Greene.
Fuller finished about 2 percentage points behind Harris in a bipartisan race on March 10, largely because the Republican Party was split among multiple candidates who remained in the mix even after the president endorsed her.
Harris slightly improved margins in nearly all of the district’s 10 counties in March compared to performance two years ago. But it would take a significant improvement to beat Fuller, especially in a highly populated area like Cobb County near metro Atlanta.
Potential 2028 Democratic candidates, including Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who endorsed Harris last weekend, and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are in the district to support her underdog campaign.
Harris said other prominent party leaders have been in touch as well, including former Vice President Kamala Harris. The former vice president told USA TODAY he is not affiliated with the candidate but called him after the runoff.
The former 2024 Democratic president told Democratic leaders across the country that it’s “okay if the messages don’t necessarily align,” the Georgia congressional candidate said.
Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist who worked on Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, said the party needs to actively engage voters across the country, given the pessimism about the war and the economy.
Any positive outcome in Georgia would be seen as evidence that “Trump’s coalition is dissolving,” he said.
Georgia is a key swing state for both parties, with Republican advocacy groups spending about $44 million to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.
But infighting within the state’s Republican Party has reportedly jeopardized his chances, prompting experts to change their re-election predictions. According to Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, Georgia’s Senate race shifted from a “close race” to a “Democratic-leaning” one in January.
“While the district may be a long-term goal, it could be a harbinger of how bad things are for Republicans and how much better things will be for Democrats in November,” Smith said. “You can’t play small when you have nothing to lose.”
Contributor: Eileen Wright
