Democrat Harris to Face Trump-Backed Fuller in Runoff to Replace Greene
By Reuters | 10 Mar, 2026

In a shift in voter sentiment away from Trump, a moderate democrat won the most first-round votes in a once deep-red blue-collar Georgia district.

Georgia Democrat Congressional candidate Shawn Harris attends an interview at his campaign headquarters during a special election in Georgia to fill a seat in its 14th congressional district, which was left vacant when Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned in January, in Rome, Georgia, U.S., March 10, 2026. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer

The Republican candidate backed by President Donald Trump will advance to a runoff against a Democrat in the Georgia race to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. media projected on Tuesday, in a special election seen as a test of Trump's sway over his party.

Trump's preferred candidate, former district attorney for four northwest Georgia counties Clay Fuller, will face Shawn Harris, a moderate Democrat who sought to court disillusioned Trump voters, in the April 7 runoff, according to news reports.

With 83% of the expected vote in, Harris was the top vote getter at 36.8% while Fuller secured 35.3%, according to the Associated Press. However, Fuller is widely expected to win the runoff in the staunchly conservative district.

The race has drawn outsized national attention because it offers an early measure of Trump's grip on his base in an area that has been a stronghold of his Make America Great Again movement. Greene carried the district easily in 2024, winning 64.4% of the vote to Harris’s 35.6%.

Fuller said he viewed the result as a victory even if he did not secure a majority of the vote to avoid a runoff.

"We know that the endorsement from President Trump made a difference in this race, and we're going to go and win it," he told Reuters at a watch party on Tuesday night.

When news outlets projected the runoff between Harris and Fuller, a cheer went up in the parking lot outside a restaurant in Rome, a city in the heart of the district, where about 70 of Harris's supporters had gathered.

"I feel great about where we stand right now. We want to win it straight out... but we knew we'd at least get the runoff. And we're going to win. I am proud to say we've built a coalition of Democrats, Republicans and Independents," Harris told Reuters.

Georgia's 14th Congressional District, a mostly blue-collar corridor from Atlanta's exurbs north to the Tennessee border, vaulted into the national spotlight after Greene swept to victory in 2020 and quickly became one of MAGA's most outspoken national figures.

Greene had a public falling out with Trump late in 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 runoff will serve through the end of 2026 but must immediately campaign for the full two-year term starting January 2027, beginning with a May primary that could pit many of the same contenders against each other again.

(Reporting by Jayla Whitfield-Anderson in Lookout Mountain, Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne; Writing by Nathan Layne and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Ross Colvin, Scott Malone, Alistair Bell, Cynthia Osterman, Edmund Klamann and Stephen Coates)