Georgia special election to replace MTG tests the power of Trump’s endorsement

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ATLANTA — Voters in Northwest Georgia are choosing who should replace former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Voting closes in the district’s special election on Tuesday night.

The election will test the weight of President Trump’s endorsement of one of the candidates in a crowded race. Some voters say the president’s choice is not who they think would best support the conservative MAGA movement championed by both Trump and Greene.

Greene resigned at the beginning of this year, leaving Georgia’s 14th Congressional District without representation in Congress — and slimming the GOP’s majority in the House — following a bitter split with Trump.

Greene rose to prominence over five years in office as a strong ally of Trump, bombastically attacking critics and pushing the MAGA movement’s “America First” policy. Yet the two had a very public clash after she pushed for the release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Greene has also been sharply critical of Trump’s actions abroad, saying he has strayed from his promises to focus domestically.

With Trump now in the second year of his second term, other high-profile spats with key parts of his MAGA coalition have erupted over his administration’s handling of other issues, including sweeping tariffs, immigration policy and more. More recently, rifts have emerged over the war with Iran.

Some, like Greene, argue that though Trump helped create the “America First” worldview, he is not the sole arbiter of what it looks like.

Most of the GOP candidates in the special election have said they want to focus on Trump’s priorities and the concerns of their district, rather than become headlines themselves — an approach they say Greene embraced in her public disputes with Democrats and even with members of her own party.

“The difference between Marjorie and I is I will not use the press to become a celebrity,” Republican Star Black said during a candidate forum on Feb. 16. “I will use the press to actually show what I have done — the accomplishments,”

Trump has endorsed Clay Fuller, a district attorney in northwest Georgia for the state’s Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit. He emphasized his support last month during a visit to Rome, part of the state’s 14th District, where he held a rally to tout his administration’s economic policy.

Fuller called himself a “MAGA warrior” at the event.

“I really like him,” said rally attendee Jill Fisher. “I think he’s a strong candidate, seems like a very nice family man with some great values. And I think he’ll add a lot to Congress.”

Highlighting Fuller’s military service as an Air Force veteran, an ad for his campaign says, ” ‘America First’ is the story of his life.”

Fuller faces several other GOP candidates in the primary, including former state Sen. Colton Moore. Moore won elections for the state Legislature in the district before and is considered one of the most right-leaning lawmakers at the state level.

“I’m 100% pro-Trump,” Moore declared in his campaign announcement video.

He’s made a few headlines of his own. Last year, Moore was arrested for attempting to enter the House chambers in Atlanta to attend the State of the State address by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. Moore argued he had a constitutional right to enter the chamber. Moore had been banned from entering the chambers by the state’s Republican House Speaker Jon Burns for disparaging comments he made about a late Georgia lawmaker at his portrait unveiling.

Moore’s record matters for some GOP voters even more than Trump’s endorsement. Less Dunaway, 14th district voter, says he’s a strong supporter of Trump, but thinks Moore will do a better job carrying out the president’s agenda than Trump’s own pick.

“He actually knows what he’s doing,” Dunaway said of Moore. “He was a state representative, a state senator. He was the first one to fight the people over the 2020 election in Georgia.”

Moore was one of a group of GOP state lawmakers who called on lawmakers to investigate or impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she charged Trump and others with trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, when Trump and his allies pushed baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

Fuller insists Trump made the right choice in supporting his bid.

“I think they’re looking for someone to carry President Trump’s banner, support his agenda, and fight for him on Capitol Hill,” Fuller told Georgia Public Broadcasting last month.

Still some Republicans who attended the February rally left undecided.

“I don’t just blindly follow what [Trump] says,” said Clay Cooper of Rome.

Still, Cooper said that Trump’s endorsement means he will give Fuller more thought. “[Fuller is] someone that [Trump] thinks aligns very much with his messaging, with his actions, so that certainly weighs in,” Cooper said.

Unlike a partisan primary, all the candidates — Republicans, Democrats and third party candidates — will be on the same ballot for voters in the special election. If no one gets over 50% of the vote, the two top vote-getters regardless of party will advance to a runoff on April 7.

Follow the results below as polls close on Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET.

NPR’s Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.