By Jayla Whitfield-Anderson, Rich McKay and Nathan Layne
DALTON, Georgia, Feb 13 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump may have expected his endorsement of a local prosecutor in the race to replace U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to clear the Republican field. Instead, more than a dozen Republicans are still competing, turning this deeply conservative corner of Georgia into an election-year test of Trump’s hold on his Make America Great Again movement.
Clay Fuller, the former district attorney for four counties in northwest Georgia, became the presumptive frontrunner after Trump threw his support behind him on February 4, describing him as a torchbearer of MAGA.
Trump's endorsement, however, has not deterred 14 other Republican candidates from pressing ahead in the March 10 special election, with early voting to start on Monday. Three Democratic candidates and one independent are also competing.
Several of the Republican candidates are casting themselves as the true champions of Trump's right-wing populism, vying to fill the vacuum left by Greene, who resigned her congressional seat in January after a bitter split with the president.
Georgia's 14th Congressional District, a mostly blue-collar corridor from Atlanta’s exurbs up to the Tennessee border, has established itself as a MAGA stronghold since Greene swept to victory in 2020 and quickly became one of the movement's most outspoken national figures. Now, with Greene stepping aside, the district's voters are grappling with what comes next for the party and who should lead it.
Interviews with 22 voters suggest the race remains fluid. Most Republicans said they had not settled on a candidate and that Trump's endorsement alone won't decide their vote.
"I'm a Trump supporter, and I respect his opinion, but he doesn't live in this district," said John Burdette, a voter who attended a candidate forum this week in the city of Kennesaw. "I think we have a better perspective on who is best to represent us."
The fight to claim the mantle of MAGA standard-bearer in Greene's district highlights how the movement nationally is evolving. While fealty to Trump is still the distinct denominator, there is increasingly less agreement on what it means to be "MAGA", a label that now covers a far more diverse coalition.
These emerging divisions pose a risk for Republicans' control of Congress in November's midterm elections, creating potential openings for Democrats to take advantage of any infighting in competitive districts.
With Republicans splitting votes, political observers say the leading Democratic candidate, Shawn Harris, could gain enough support to make a runoff, set for April 7 if no candidate secures a majority.
After losing to Greene by 64.4%–35.6% in 2024, his performance will be watched to see if Democrats can sustain their recent streak of outperforming in special elections, though outright victory is seen as highly unlikely.
A U.S. Air Force veteran, Fuller said he aims to focus on bringing economic development to the district's poorer rural communities stretching across the foothills of Appalachia. He also vowed to move past Greene’s combative style, marked by conspiracy-mongering and online attacks on Trump’s perceived enemies that drew scrutiny to the district.
"I've got the gear for fire and brimstone when the situation calls for it," he told Reuters after a campaign event. "But I'm my own man. I don't think the voters want that style again."
'GOD, GUNS, TRUMP'
Still, Fuller does sometimes use inflammatory rhetoric in support of Trump's agenda.
On January 24 - the same day federal immigration officers shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis - he pledged in a post on X that, if elected, he would nominate all Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for the Presidential Medal of Freedom and push to triple the agency's budget.
But no candidate in the race has been as fiery or aggressive in backing the president over the years as Colton Moore, a hard-right former state senator who calls himself “Trump’s #1 Defender" and is running under the slogan “GOD. GUNS. TRUMP.”
A longtime champion of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Moore has repeatedly clashed with Georgia’s Republican leadership.
To Charles Stoker, an 81-year-old Republican voter, that confrontational approach is precisely what resonates with grassroots conservatives eager to challenge the establishment. He noted that a string of Georgia Republicans lost their races in the 2022 midterms despite being endorsed by Trump.
"President Trump has been getting bad advice," he said, voicing disappointment with the Fuller endorsement. "Directions need to come from the people upward."
Though he missed out on Trump's endorsement, Moore has secured backing from former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and the Georgia Republican Assembly, a group that represents the party's far-right wing.
"President Trump's going to be gone in a few years," GRA President Nathaniel Darnell told Reuters, arguing that Moore, not Fuller, could be trusted to work in the district's best interests.
The main differences between candidates are on style rather than substance. Some candidates have embraced the combative approach that defines Trumpism, while some have called for more civility and consensus-building in politics.
Meg Strickland, who voted for Trump, is one of the few self-described moderates in the race. She says the party should chart a new course that would see it return to its small-government roots and move away from caustic, personality-driven politics.
"I don't think that Trump is a true conservative and I hope that we can get back there," said the 39-year-old travel consultant and mother of three.
LONG ODDS FOR HARRIS, BUT COULD SEND REPUBLICANS A MESSAGE
Strickland, running on a “return to normal” message, acknowledges the steep odds she faces in a district Trump carried with 68% of the vote in 2024.
But she believes Republicans are misreading the moment, pointing to the voter backlash to aggressive tactics by federal immigration agents and the cost-of-living squeeze she says dominates her campaign stops.
Harris, a 59-year-old cattle farmer and retired brigadier general, has made courting disaffected Republican voters a central focus of his Democratic candidacy, aiming to win them over with a message centered on lowering costs for everyday workers and expanding access to affordable healthcare.
Harris, who has $1.2 million on hand to campaign, said he sees overlap between his positions and Greene’s since her break with Trump and shift in focus to helping working Americans, curbing toxic politics and tackling the national debt.
"Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Republican that has moved back into what the old Republicans were," Harris said. "Her talking points are the same talking points that I had when I ran against her the last time."
A Quantus Insights poll of 729 registered Republicans conducted in the last week of January, before Trump's endorsement, pointed to a wide-open race, with Moore and Fuller at the top with 13.4% and 12.6% support, and more than a third of respondents undecided.
Nathan Price, a political science professor at the University of North Georgia, said the race's fluidity reflects a Republican Party and a MAGA movement in transition.
"I think you're starting to see perhaps the party looking beyond him a little bit as he gets into the sixth year and maybe starting to think about the future of the party," he said.
(Reporting by Jayla Whitfield-Anderson, Rich McKay and Nathan Layne, editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)
