Trump's influence on the ballot — and what Tuesday's special election will tell us

The MAGA movement was rocked by a major bombshell when, in November 2025, far-right then-Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) expressed her disappointment with President Donald Trump by resigning from Congress. Greene not only decided against seeking reelection in the 2026 midterms — she left Congress altogether in early January, opting not to serve out the rest of her term.

This Tuesday, April 7, a special election to fill that U.S. House of Representatives seat will be held in Georgia's deep red 14th Congressional District, where Trump-endorsed Republican Clayton Fuller (a former local prosecutor and Air National Guardian veteran) is up against Democrat Shawn Harris (a cattle farmer and retired U.S. Army brigadier general). This isn't Harris' first time running for that seat: in 2024, he took on Greene and lost by 29 percent.

But in a New York Times article published on April 6, reporter Tim Balk emphasizes that the special election will be largely a referendum on Trump's war against Iran — which ex-Rep. Greene views as a major betrayal of the America First movement.

Harris, Balk notes, "has put his opposition to the conflict at the core of his closing pitch," while Fuller "says the war is keeping Americans safe" and "has proudly pointed to an endorsement" from Trump.

Although Georgia has evolved into a swing state in recent years — Trump lost the Peach State to Joe Biden in 2020 but carried it by 2 percent in 2024 — the 14th Congressional District is deep red. And Harris, after Greene's landslide reelection victory in 2024, knows he is facing an uphill climb.

Balk reports, "Political observers will be watching the margin on Tuesday for hints of how the war and other factors, such as immigration and the economy, could affect the November midterms…. Even before the Iran war, (Harris) centered his campaign platform on lowering prices. Now, he is arguing that Mr. Trump's decision to go to war is squeezing Georgians' finances…. Mr. Fuller has not focused heavily on the war, preferring to highlight his support for Mr. Trump's immigration crackdown. But in a debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club in partnership with Georgia Public Broadcasting last month, he stood behind the war."

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