Who are Clayton Fuller and Shawn Harris, candidates in the Georgia runoff election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Republican Clayton Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris have advanced to a runoff in the special House election in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. The two leading candidates will face each other in the runoff on April 7 in the race to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in the US House of Representatives.

Harris won the most votes in the special election on Tuesday (43,241), followed by Fuller (40,388).

In Georgia, a runoff election is held when no candidate receives a majority of the vote in a general or special election. According to the rules, a candidate must receive more than 50% of the total votes cast to win outright. If no candidate reaches this threshold, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff election.

Candidates for Georgia runoff elections

Shawn Harris

Shawn Harris is a retired US Army brigadier general, cattle rancher, and Democratic politician. Harris served 40 years in the military, retiring as a Brigadier General. His career included serving as a combat infantry commander in Afghanistan and as a senior defense official and defense attaché at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Harris is also a cattle farmer and rancher in Rockmart, Georgia, and holds a B.A. in Agribusiness from Tuskegee University, as well as a graduate degree from the U.S. Army War College.

Harris identifies himself as a moderate Democrat, and his campaign has focused on:

Lowering the cost of living and addressing inflation.

Expanding veteran healthcare and mental health services.

Fixing the immigration system and protecting American jobs.

“For years, we’ve watched Marjorie Taylor Greene on TV, prioritizing national drama over the people of Northwest Georgia. The conversation has changed since Marjorie has quit, giving us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally bring real leadership back to this district,” a statement on his website reads.

Clayton Fuller

Clayton Fuller is the Republican candidate backed by President Donald Trump in the election seen as a test of the US President's sway over his party. Fuller is a Republican politician and former prosecutor from Georgia.

Fuller is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard and previously served as a legal advisor for US Central Command operations in the Middle East.

He previously served as the District Attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit in Northwest Georgia, a position he held from 2023 until resigning to run for Congress.

This is his second attempt for this seat; he finished fourth in the 2020 Republican primary that Greene ultimately won.

During the Trump administration, he served as a White House Fellow in the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Defense.

Fuller holds a B.A. in English from Emory University, an M.P.A. from Cornell University, and a Juris Doctor from Southern Methodist University.

Fuller received the "complete and total endorsement" of Trump in February 2026, which helped him emerge as the top Republican in a crowded 17-candidate field.

Why Georgia is important for Trump

The race has drawn outsized national attention because it offers an early measure of Trump's grip on his base in a district that has been a stronghold of his Make America Great Again movement and was thrust back into the spotlight by last year’s public split between Trump and Greene.

Georgia's 14th Congressional District is a mostly blue-collar corridor from Atlanta's suburbs north to the Tennessee border. Greene won the seat in 2020 and quickly became one of MAGA's most outspoken national figures.

Greene split with Trump in late 2025 after she went against his wishes by pushing for the release of investigative files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The winner of the runoff will serve through the end of 2026 but must immediately campaign for the full two-year term starting January 2027, beginning with a May primary that could pit many of the same contenders against each other again.

That race will be part of November's general election, when all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate's 100 seats will be at stake. Democrats are aiming to take control of the House but face longer odds in the Senate.