ADRIAN MA, HOST:
Voters in northwest Georgia are gearing up for a special election this Tuesday. The results will determine the replacement for former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene resigned at the beginning of the year after a public falling out with President Trump. As a result, her district has been without representation in Congress and the Republicans' margin of control in the House has shrunk. To explain what's next, we turn to reporter Sarah Kallis, a politics reporter with Georgia Public Broadcasting. Thanks for being here, Sarah.
SARAH KALLIS, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
MA: And Sarah, you recently visited Greene's former district. What can you tell us about it?
KALLIS: So Georgia's 14th Congressional District is in northwest Georgia, and it's a mix of rural and suburban counties. It voted overwhelmingly for both President Trump and former Congresswoman Greene in both 2020 and 2024. Greene represented the district from 2021 to her resignation at the beginning of this year. And while she was once a strong ally of President Trump, she had a very public split with him after she pushed for the release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
MA: And so now who is lining up to try and replace Greene's seat?
KALLIS: Well, more than a dozen candidates total, including Republicans, Democrats and third-party candidates have qualified to appear on the ballot. Georgia special elections don't have primaries, so all of the candidates will be on one ballot together. And if no one gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters are going to advance to a runoff on April 7. Trump has already endorsed one candidate, Clay Fuller, who is a district attorney in North Georgia. I spoke to Jill Fisher (ph), who's a voter in the 14th District, and she says she supports Fuller.
JILL FISHER: I really like him. 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.
KALLIS: And another Republican front-runner is former state Senator (ph) Colton Moore. And he's won elections for the state level in the district before. And while he was at the state Capitol, he was one of the most far-right-leaning lawmakers in the state. Some supporters are backing Moore, even if they're fans of President Trump. Les Dunaway (ph), for example, says he's voting for Moore.
LES DUNAWAY: He actually knows what he's doing. He was a state representative, a state senator.
KALLIS: And Dunaway noted that Moore is already a strong supporter of Trump, so he believes he'll carry out the president's agenda in Congress. And Moore has also maintained that he's a pro-Trump candidate, even without the president's endorsement.
COLTON MOORE: I'm 100% pro-Trump. I was the first elected official to call out the fraud in the 2020 election.
KALLIS: And of course, it's important to note here that the president lost the race in Georgia in 2020, and there's been no evidence of mass voter fraud in Georgia or anywhere else, for that matter.
MA: I mean, that last candidate is quite a contrast from former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had a pretty public falling out with President Trump last year. How is that playing into the race?
KALLIS: Well, the district is still considered a conservative stronghold. I asked candidate Clay Fuller, who has the Trump endorsement, and I asked him if he could bridge the gap between the 14th District and President Trump. And he told me there is no gap between voters and the president.
CLAY FULLER: I think they're looking for someone to carry President Trump's banner, support his agenda and fight for on Capitol Hill.
KALLIS: And some voters say that Trump's endorsement doesn't necessarily mean everything to them. Here's Clay Cooper (ph) from Rome, Georgia.
CLAY COOPER: That's not my sole reason. I don't just kind of blindly follow what he says, but it's someone that he thinks aligns very much with his messaging, with his actions. So that certainly weighs in.
KALLIS: And Cooper told me he wasn't a president - he wasn't a fan of MTG, and he thought that she came in too bombastic. I spoke to him before he attended a rally with President Trump last month, and at the time, he told me he was still undecided on who he would support.
One thing that's clear is that many candidates say they don't necessarily want to be a repeat of former Congresswoman Greene. In a candidate forum in Georgia last month, several candidates like Fuller and former 14th District GOP chair, Jim Tully, say they want to focus more on the district and less on getting media attention.
MA: Sarah, in about the 30 seconds we have left, any idea how all this is going to shake out on Tuesday?
KALLIS: Well, the race is very likely to go to a runoff. Because there are so many candidates, it's going to be hard for anyone to break that 50% threshold. Democrats may rally around one candidate, and that candidate may be Shawn Harris. He's a veteran, and he ran against Greene last cycle. He's pretty popular among Democrats in the district.
MA: That is Georgia Public Broadcasting's Sarah Kallis. Thanks for joining us again, Sarah.
KALLIS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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