The Republican picked up the seat vacated by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday, but the dramatic shift in the margins has Democrats celebrating anyway.
Trump-backed candidate Clay Fuller, a former district attorney, won the special election after he and Democratic candidate Shawn Harris advanced to the runoff.
It boosts Republicans’ razor-thin majority on Capitol Hill slightly as they look to pass more legislation ahead of the midterms, but the results show more races than previously thought could be competitive for Democrats this fall.
With less than 92 percent of the votes counted, Fuller was projected to win by just 57.2 percent. Democrat Shawn Harris won 42.8 percent.
Its a major shift for such a previously deep red district. Trump won Georgia’s 14th Congressional District by 37 points in 2024. The current margin is just 14 points for Republicans.
Greene won the district, while she was a hardcore Trump ally, by more than 108,000 votes in the last election or by nearly 29 points when she faced off against Harris, who ran on the Democratic ticket in the last election as well.
In the special election on March 10, Harris edged out a lead over Fuller as the pair advanced in the crowded race with more than 37 percent of the vote to Fuller’s nearly 35 percent.
However, Fuller was expected to consolidate more of the GOP support behind him in the runoff.
However, Harris, a retired Army Brigadier General who served in combat, did notably better on his margins in every single county during the March special election than he did when he ran in 2024 in the heavily Republican district.
Looking ahead to November, Democrats need to net flip just three seats to win the House majority, and the odds continue to trend in their favor.
The Georgia seat became vacant after Greene exited Congress after a dramatic falling out with Trump, her onetime close MAGA ally.
Since their massive breakup stemming in part from Greene’s push to release the Jeffrey Epstein files despite the president’s opposition, the former GOP congresswoman has continued to be a fierce critic of the president.
The special election was one of the first major political tests after Trump launched strikes on Iran on February 28 as voters grapple with the ongoing war and the economic fallout.
After the president threatened to wipe out civilization in Iran on Tuesday in a post on Truth Social, Greene called for Trump to be removed from office.
“25TH AMENDMENT!!!” she wrote on X. “Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”
After Trump threatened to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges on Easter Sunday, she wrote, “This NOT what we promised the American people when they overwhelmingly voted in 2024, I know, I was there more than most. This is not making America great again, this is evil.”
She has put the president and Republicans on blast not just for the war in Iran but also over the ongoing government shutdown, the handling of the Epstein files, health care and more.
Harris focused his campaign largely on the high cost of living and affordability, but as the Iran war escalated and prices soared in response to Trump’s strikes, he pushed against the U.S. involvement in the war in the Middle East.
The Democratic cattle farmer invoked his military experience serving in combat in Afghanistan while speaking out against the president’s ongoing strikes.
Fuller, an Air National Guard veteran, proudly touted Trump’s backing and being America First while warning against Democrats retaking the House majority this fall.
While the GOP former prosecutor tabled in red-meat culture war issues for the base, like keeping men out of women’s sports, he largely stayed quiet about the president launching the war in Iran and the resulting spike in gas prices across the U.S.
