Shaping the race to replace her

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s feud with Donald Trump is shaping the race to replace her

By Kathryn Squyres

Among the people running to fill the seat vacated by former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of her former staffers, Jim Tully. Introducing himself on a local conservative radio show in January, he didn’t mention his connection to Greene until asked by the host.

Tully said Greene’s departure left “a glaring loss in the district,” adding that he announced his campaign almost immediately after Greene’s November announcement of her resignation to give voters a chance to “start over.”

“I couldn’t leave families wondering what was next,” he said. “I had to give them some hope.”

Other candidates are more pointed about their former congresswoman.

James Marty Brown, a former firefighter and paramedic, says Greene “divided a lot of people” with her approach to politics.

“She’s the cat chasing that little dangling feather, a little shiny object, instead of sitting back and looking to see what the big picture of what’s going on is,” he told CNN recently.

There’s a clear pattern in how the Republicans running to replace Greene address her resignation and her split with President Donald Trump. Those who are better known due to their prior involvement with local GOP politics strike a balance between showing loyalty to Trump and respect to Greene, while newcomers have less hesitation about taking shots at her.

CNN spoke with or reviewed the public comments of 12 of the 16 Republicans who launched campaigns to replace Greene in a March 10 primary likely to lead to an April runoff.

Almost all are claiming that they will be Trump’s best local ally. More than half said they regularly hear from voters about Greene, including from people who say they felt confused and betrayed by her resignation in the middle of her third term.

David Guldenschuh, an attorney in Rome, Georgia, who hosts a weekly conservative talk show on WLAQ-AM, notes that Georgia’s 14th District is one of the most pro-Trump districts in the country, particularly in its northern counties on the Tennessee and Alabama borders well away from the Atlanta suburbs.

“President Trump is extremely popular here, so of course you’re going to see the candidates try to, as I said, out-Trump each other,” said Guldenschuh, who is also the past chair of the Floyd County Republican Party.

Trump this week endorsed Clay Fuller, who resigned his role as a local district attorney to run in the special election. Fuller said recently that he would ultimately back the president even when the administration disagreed with him.

“If they say, ‘This is what we’re going with,’ they have a very strong perspective on what’s best for the American people,” he said on Guldenschuh’s show. “So I’d be willing to listen … and assist them with it because when I’m up there, I’m going to have the president’s back.”

Greene wrote on X in November that she would not be endorsing a successor.

A balancing act for some candidates

As a senior district representative for Greene, Tully said that he worked as Greene’s “eyes and ears” in the district, relaying local sentiments to her office.

Still, he spent most of a recent interview on Guldenschuh’s show pitching listeners on his connection to the district.

“When we found ourselves so enamored with Congresswoman Greene at points, and all of the sudden, here we are just disillusioned at some points, sometimes very mad, folks needed to know that there was somebody there that cared enough to say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not gonna let that happen,’” he said.

Brian Stover, a former county commissioner and businessman from the southern part of the district, told Fox News Digital in December that he had a different approach.

“I respect everything she’s done,” Stover said. “She’s worked for the district, but I have a different tactic. I go in, and I like to negotiate through just sitting down, having good, great conversations and … not being so loud, like she is.”

Stover also told Fox News that he’d handle any disagreements with the president privately.

“You don’t get stuff from just going in and trying to be the bull in the china shop,” he said. “I can sit down with President Trump, and I guarantee you we can work things out for the best of my district.”

And former state Sen. Colton Moore, who also resigned to run, said in a statement to CNN that Greene’s “departure opens the door for a new chapter focused on unity behind Trump.”

“I think the Republican Party absolutely has problems, especially when it comes to weak leadership and broken promises,” Moore said in the statement. “Donald Trump remains the most important political figure in our movement and the clear leader of the America First base. Congresswoman Greene raised important concerns to hold people accountable, and I appreciate her fighting for the district.”

Moore also has his own history of clashes with Republicans. He was expelled from the state senate’s GOP caucus and later arrested for attempting to force his way onto the House floor for a joint address after he had been banned from the chamber. He said in his statement he’s “not running to be anyone’s clone.”

The political newcomers take more shots at Greene

While none of the newcomers are centering their opinions of Greene in their campaigns, several of them were quick to criticize her in interviews with CNN.

Star Black, a retired Federal Emergency Management Agency employee, had already been running to challenge Greene in the primary if she had run again. She said talking to voters since her campaign announcement in June showed how “polarizing” Greene had been.

“(Greene) never had a plan of how she was going to fix anything, but she certainly was able to grab a headline to complain about it,” Black told CNN.

Meg Strickland, who’s running on a platform to “return to normal” and is the only Republican CNN spoke with who openly criticized Trump, agreed.

Where she’s been campaigning at the southeastern area of the district around the Atlanta suburbs, she said people have been ready to move on from Greene since before her feud with Trump.

“She was in it for herself and not actually serving the people, so she didn’t accomplish anything,” Strickland said. “If you’re gonna be that divisive and belligerent all the time, then you’re never going to have open discussions to create common solutions for people.”

Jared Craig, an attorney in Newnan and the vice president of Veterans for America First, said that fiery approach to politics was more effective when the GOP was in the minority.

“Her brand was well suited for being the underdog,” he said. “But once you get to the point of winning, I don’t think that she had a real sense of what to do at that point.”

Other candidates criticized Greene for her abrupt departure from Congress.

Though both said they were grateful for the attention Greene brought the district, Beau Brown, who works in risk management, said her resignation “left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth,” and Jenna Turnipseed, a farmer and an Army veteran, said she “didn’t see a lot of reasoning for Greene’s “immediate political shifts on things like (Affordable Care Act) subsidies.”

Nicky Lama, who resigned his Dalton City Council seat to run, said, “Everybody, including myself, just wants to know what changed, what happened?” And Reagan Box, who ended her Senate campaign to run for the seat, said a lot of voters felt “shafted” because they had supported her.

Black and Box also worried about the cost of putting on a special election, and Strickland said she had “zero respect for someone who promised her constituency a term and then left.”

“We kind of feel sad for her,” Craig said. “That’s kind of the real tone. Because she had opportunity and it’s just sad where she chose to take it.”

Guldenschuh, the host of the weekly conservative talk show, doesn’t think denouncing Greene will benefit the field. Many voters in the district still “love” Greene, he said, and wish she and Trump could’ve worked out their disagreements.

“I think (the candidates) should be very proud and honored that we had somebody like Marjorie representing us for as long as she did,” he added.