Shawn Harris lost the special election battle to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in northwest Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, but the Army veteran made it clear Tuesday night he still intends to win the war.
“I’m gonna be right back out there on the campaign trail in a few weeks,” Harris told reporters and supporters around 8:30 p.m. during a watch party event at the Courtyard by Marriott Rome Riverwalk hotel.
The Associated Press declared the Donald Trump-endorsed Clay Fuller the winner in the runoff race against Harris some time after 8 p.m. Tuesday. Fuller received more than 57% of unofficial votes cast in the contest to Harris’ 42.5%, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s website.
The Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit district attorney will fill the remainder of Greene’s two-year term, which ends in January, but he won’t have long to celebrate. He’ll be up for re-election again in November and is expected to face primary challenges again in May.
Campaign staffers for Harris, a U.S. Army veteran and cattle farmer originally from Blakely, noted during the evening that he outperformed the roughly 35% vote share he received in his 2024 race against Greene in a dark-red district.
He acknowledged the moral victory during conversations with reporters.
“We came up a little short, but we did not lose,” Harris said. “Nobody thought a Democrat would have a result like this.”
It’s been less than two years since Greene — the MAGA movement champion who resigned from Congress in January after a venomous, public feud with President Donald Trump — defeated Harris by a nearly 29-point margin in the 14th Congressional District race that exemplified Trump’s political power among conservatives in the Peach State.
Harris’ performance in the 2026 special election to replace Greene in the House of Representatives coincided with a decline in popularity for Trump and his allies in the Georgia GOP.
Polls heading into the runoff showed the bombing of Iran on Feb. 28 and the resulting rise in gas prices has caused many former supporters to sour on Trump. That includes some in Greene’s former district.
“He made all these promises and ain’t nothin’ happened,” South Rome resident Christopher Darden previously told Capital B Atlanta on March 27.
Support among GOP voters in District 14 was split between a crowded field of Republican candidates including Fuller and fellow MAGA enthusiast Colton Moore. Those voters appear to have rallied behind Fuller in his runoff race against Harris.
During the campaign, Harris assessed that Democrats who despise Trump would be more excited about sending a midterm election cycle message than Trump’s supporters would be about backing his handpicked successor to Greene.
He told supporters Tuesday night that he ultimately failed in his mission to get voters to turnout for the runoff after leading the crowded field of candidates during the March 10 special election.
“We lost this race because some kind of way, we did not get 5,000+ people to the polls,” Harris said. “I put all that on me. We’re gonna learn from it, get better and then come November, our ground game will get even better. We will win this election in November.”
Read More:
