Republican Clay Fuller, a former district attorney and Air National Guard lieutenant colonel who received endorsement from President Donald Trump, won Tuesday’s special election for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District with 56% of the vote to Democrat Shawn Harris’s 44%.
Fuller’s victory margin was slightly lower than the 68% achieved by former Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in her last election cycle in 2024, but experts characterized it as a decisive win given the electoral context.
State and national Democrats invested millions of dollars to support Democrat Shawn Harris, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general who has been a prominent critic of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military operations against Iran. In a recent debate, Harris stated: “We are currently in a forever war,” adding that “we should be trying to pull out of it.”
Fuller countered with the assertion that “our country is safer because of what the president has done regarding Iran” and described the opposing group as “a death cult that cannot be negotiated with.” Fuller also positioned himself as a strong supporter of President Trump’s domestic agenda and had the president’s blessing on his Truth Social platform.
Local experts noted that turnout in historically Republican areas of North Georgia reached 28% of the 2024 level, compared to a 38% turnout in Democratic regions. Phil Kent, Augusta (Georgia) publisher and conservative activist, said: “The Democrats spent millions of dollars to try to beat Clay Fuller, but ended up essentially getting the same number of votes even if they had spent nothing.”
