Republican Clay Fuller Claims Victory in Georgia Special Election

Clay Fuller, the district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit and a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard, won the special election runoff for Georgia's 14th Congressional District on Tuesday, defeating Democrat Shawn Harris by roughly 13 percentage points in a race that drew national attention as a bellwether for Republican strength under President Donald Trump.

Fuller captured 56% of the vote to Harris's 43%, with the Associated Press calling the race shortly after 8 p.m. The win fills the seat left vacant when former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned on January 5, 2026, following a public falling out with Trump. Governor Brian Kemp called the special election after the resignation.

The victory was not straightforward. In the March 10 first round, Harris led a crowded 21-candidate field with 37.3% of the vote to Fuller's 34.9%, forcing the runoff after neither cleared 50%. Republicans collectively won about 60% of the total first-round vote, spread across more than a dozen GOP candidates. Fuller consolidated that support in the one-on-one matchup, propelled in part by Trump's personal endorsement and a February 19 presidential visit to the Coosa Steel Corporation in Rome, Georgia.

Harris, a retired Army brigadier general and cattle farmer, ran a competitive campaign. He trailed Greene by nearly 30 percentage points in their 2024 contest, and Democrats noted that his 2026 margin represented the largest Democratic overperformance in a House special election since Trump returned to office, outrunning the 2024 Democratic presidential baseline by 25 points. Harris conceded Tuesday night with a terse acknowledgment: "It was a fair race, it was a hard-fought race."

Fuller, who served as a White House fellow during Trump's first administration, ran explicitly on an "America First" platform. "One thing is clear: We need an America First fighter to stand strong for Northwest Georgia," he said during a March 22 debate. On the eve of the runoff, he framed the stakes in Washington in pointed terms: "It's extremely crucial, and we need the reinforcements."

Those reinforcements matter. The win shores up the GOP's razor-thin 218-214 House majority under Speaker Mike Johnson. The 14th District, which Trump carried by 37 percentage points in 2024, is the most Republican-leaning congressional district in Georgia according to Cook Political Report, making any competitive showing by Democrats a talking point even in defeat.

Fuller will serve the remainder of the current term through January 2027. The political calendar offers little rest: both Fuller and Harris are set to appear again on the May 19 primary ballot for a full-term contest in the same district.