President Donald Trump doesn’t usually have to worry about Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. It’s the most heavily Republican seat in the state, and in 2024, he won it by 37 points. So when he urged Republicans last month to “be careful” about Tuesday’s special election, people noticed.
The source of his concern: Shawn Harris, a retired Army brigadier general and cattle farmer, who — running as a Democrat in the most Republican district in Georgia — emerged as the top vote-getter in last month’s special election primary to succeed former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Today, he’ll face former District Attorney Clay Fuller, the Republican nominee and Trump’s preferred candidate.
“There is a very important Special Election tomorrow, Tuesday, April 7th, in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District!,” Trump wrote in a post Monday night detailing voting guidelines in Tuesday’s election. “I am asking all Republicans, America First Patriots, and MAGA Warriors, to please GET OUT AND VOTE for a fantastic Candidate, Clay Fuller, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”
Trump’s degree of interest in the race underscores concern, to varying degrees, by the party over the results of March’s special election primary. Harris not only led the crowded field — 17 Republicans were on the ballot — but outperformed Kamala Harris’s 2024 showing in the district, fueling Democratic enthusiasm across Georgia.
“Georgians are sick and tired of cost-raising, health care-cutting, failed Republican leadership – and Shawn’s performance is the proof,” Georgia Republican Party Chair Charlie Bailey said on election night.
But Harris will face a strikingly different environment today. While Trump’s endorsement of Fuller before the March jungle primary didn’t clear the field, the runoff will be a one-on-one partisan match up. Within hours of Trump’s post, at least four of Fuller’s former Republican opponents endorsed him, as did the Northwest Georgia Republican Party and Gov. Brian Kemp. Fuller enters today’s contest with a largely unified local Republican party in a district that has never sent a Democrat to Congress.
Harris has remained confident despite those odds, bolstered by a more than $2 million fundraising haul in the first quarter — more than Fuller has spent across the entire cycle. He has also drawn high-profile support: since advancing to the runoff, the cattle farmer has held a rally with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and visited Black-owned businesses alongside Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Turning out Black voters is a priority in particular for Harris, with the campaign rolling out a video endorsement from actor Samuel L Jackson aimed squarely at that constituency.
“There are 72,903 registered Black voters in your district. Last time, only 7,000 of you voted. That’s 10%. That’s why we’re having a runoff,” Jackson said in the video.
Attuned to the district’s political terrain, Harris has been notably willing to break with Democratic orthodoxy. In a recent interview, he praised Trump’s handling of the border.
“One thing coming out of the White House right now that I support 100% is what he’s done on the border,” Harris said. “The Southern border is closed down, we got that figured out.” He added that he favors greater scrutiny of ICE.
“The idea of presenting oneself as a moderate — I think it’s appropriate for the particular district given how Republican leaning it is,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University. “You can’t run like a progressive left in an exurban-leaning district where Republicans have a nearly 20-point edge.”
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To win, Gillespie said, Harris would need to maximize Democratic turnout, peel away moderate Republicans, and hope that further-right voters — perhaps disenchanted by the war with Iran — simply stay home. She called that combination “wishful thinking.”
But the tough reality has brought out a sharpness from Harris that his opponent argues is a sign of a campaign bracing for impact.
In the closing weeks of the race, Harris circulated ads accusing Fuller of failing to effectively prosecute an accused serial rapist. A report in 2018 by the Chattanooga Times Free Press detailed how a local judge released the accused rapist while he was awaiting trial and attributed that decision in his judicial order to the prosecutor in the case, Fuller, not being adequately prepared.
Fuller denied the characterization, noting that his office ultimately secured a life sentence against the assailant years later.
“Desperate people do desperate things, and that’s exactly what Sean Harris is. He is desperate because he is losing,” Fuller said in a video response. “He started to attack my career as a prosecutor, and attacked my career as a district attorney,”
While a Harris victory remains a long shot, some observers say the race carries meaningful implications for Democrats elsewhere.
“What I’m looking at is the margin by which he loses, and whether or not it’s narrower compared to 2024,” Gillespie said, noting Harris outperformed his own showing from that cycle. “Improvement suggests a certain level of enthusiasm amongst the Democrats in the district that could be a harbinger of enthusiasm going into the November midterm elections.
The infrastructure Harris’s campaign has built, she added, can be channeled into other top Democratic races in Georgia, including Sen. Jon Ossoff’s reelection bid.
“Democrats can take all of this information, even in a loss, to try to figure out how to maintain interest amongst their voters to continue to show up in elections,” Gillespie said.
Nnamdi Egwuonwu is a reporter for MS NOW.