Georgia’s Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Tuesday announced a special election to fill the House seat vacated by the resignation of former Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, a onetime staunch defender of President Donald Trump who had an acrimonious split with the president on several issues.
The election to succeed Greene in the state’s 14th Congressional District will be held March 10, Kemp said in an executive order, days after Greene sent in her resignation letter. Her last day in Congress was Monday.
The 14th District, in northwest Georgia, is considered safely Republican and is unlikely to lead to a shift in power in the House. However, her departure, coupled with the death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-California) this week, has left Republicans clinging to a razor-thin House majority of 218 seats. With the margin narrowed, the GOP can afford to lose only two votes to pass partisan legislation if all Democrats are present and voting. Democrats hold 213 seats in the House.
Greene announced her intention to resign in November, in the middle of her two-year term. The surprise move came days after a public falling-out with Trump, who branded her a “traitor” and withdrew his endorsement.
In a 10-minute video and four-page statement, the influential supporter of the Make America Great Again coalition said that “loyalty should be a two-way street,” highlighting her efforts to elect Trump. She criticized her fellow House Republicans over their handling of the shutdown and other issues she said have paralyzed Congress.
Trump hailed her resignation, declaring it to be “great news for the country.”
Her break with party leadership had been some time in the making. Earlier in November, Greene’s split with Trump became pronounced after she and three other Republicans joined Democrats in pushing the House to vote on requiring the Justice Department to release more files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
She also opposed the Trump administration’s decision to aid Argentina’s economy and has been one of the most vocal Republican critics of U.S. support for Israel and Ukraine. In an October interview with The Washington Post, she called out “weak Republican men,” who she said sidelined female colleagues.
Last week, she once again criticized Trump’s latest foreign policy gambit. In a post on X, Greene questioned how U.S. actions in Venezuela differ from Russian aggression in Ukraine.
“Regime change, funding foreign wars, and American’s tax dollars being consistently funneled to foreign causes, foreigners both home and abroad, and foreign governments while Americans are consistently facing increasing cost of living, housing, health care, and learn about scams and fraud of their tax dollars is what has most Americans enraged,” she wrote.
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