Republican Clay Fuller will win Georgia special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene, CNN projects

Rome, Georgia (CNN) — Republican Clay Fuller will win the special election runoff in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District to replace former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, dashing Democratic hopes for an upset win and allowing national Republicans to breathe a sigh of relief.

Fuller will defeat Democrat Shawn Harris, a farmer and retired Army brigadier general who ran and lost to Greene by nearly 30 percentage points in 2024. Harris conceded Tuesday night, saying, “It was a fair race, it was a hard-fought race.”

The race to replace Greene, the former ally-turned-critic of President Donald Trump who resigned from Congress in January, advanced to a runoff when neither Harris nor Fuller were able to win a majority in a crowded all-party election on March 10, though several Republican candidates split the field.

Fuller, who resigned his role as a district attorney in the state’s northwest corner to run in the special election, earned an endorsement from the president nearly a month before the March primary. That boosted his profile among a dozen Republican candidates in the first round, but it wasn’t enough to earn him the majority he needed to win outright and avoid the runoff, given the splintered field.

Speaking to his supporters Tuesday night, Fuller called Trump “the most critical factor in our election” and said the president “made sure that he was the ultimate trump card.”

“I will be on Capitol Hill as a warrior to have his back each and every day,” Fuller said to cheers.

A Fuller win is welcome news for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who can only lose one vote in the House amid the GOP’s slim majority. A special election in New Jersey to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill in just over a week, on April 16, will almost certainly add another Democrat to House ranks.

The Republican majority is not always functional. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the GOP to become an independent, caucuses with Republicans but isn’t always guaranteed to vote with them. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie has also become an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and cannot always be a reliable vote on party-line legislation.

Fuller avoids being added to a list of high-profile losses among some Trump-endorsed candidates recently: last month, Republican Jon Maples, endorsed by Trump in January, lost a special election for a seat in a Florida state House district that includes Mar-a-Lago and North Carolina State Senate leader Phil Berger, a powerful leader in the state, narrowly lost his primary.

It’s important to note that special elections, especially special runoff elections, often feature low turnout, placing a high emphasis on voter enthusiasm that can swing results more effectively than in larger elections.

It is not Harris’ last chance to run for the seat or to run against Fuller, as the general primary for the full term is on May 19. Both Fuller and Harris qualified for the ballot last month, along with many of the candidates they ran against in the special election in March.

“Tonight, we start campaigning for November,” Harris told his supporters.

The story has been updated with additional developments.

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CNN’s Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.