Voters will weigh in on Tuesday in two elections in the South that could offer clues to both political parties about the sentiments driving this year’s midterm cycle: how strongly Democrats are seeking generational change, and how willing Republicans are to heed President Trump’s endorsement.
Mississippi and Georgia will hold contests less consequential than those that took place earlier this month in Texas and North Carolina, and many of the races on Tuesday are not expected to be particularly competitive.
For instance, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi is expected to easily fend off her primary challenge from Sarah Adlakha, a businesswoman, in her safely Republican seat.
But two races stand out: the special election to fill the vacant seat of former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in rural northwest Georgia, and the re-election bid of Representative Bennie Thompson, 78, who is fighting to fend off a younger Democrat who is trying to make an issue of Thompson’s age.
Here’s what to look for in both states:
Will Democrats boot a senior House member?
After Democrats started suggesting more than a year ago that they were ready to oust the old guard of their party and usher in a wave of younger lawmakers, their first attempts to do so in Texas and North Carolina last week met with mixed results.
One older incumbent, Representative Valerie Foushee, defeated her young progressive challenger in North Carolina by an extremely narrow margin, while another, Representative Al Green, is headed to a runoff in Texas.
Another young candidate will try his hand on Tuesday in Mississippi. Mr. Thompson, who became a cable-news fixture as a co-chair of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is fighting to fend off Evan Turnage, 34, an antitrust lawyer who has criticized Mr. Thompson’s effectiveness and has drawn contrasts between himself and his rival based on age. Among other jabs, Turnage likes to say that he was a year old when Mr. Thompson was first elected in 1993.
But Mr. Thompson, once a young activist in the segregated Mississippi of the 1960s, retains significant support, and Mr. Turnage’s bid could prove to be a long shot. Mr. Thompson is running on his record, arguing that he has been a steady and productive advocate for a district that is more than two-thirds Black and is also one of the poorest in the nation.
Who will emerge from a crowded primary to replace M.T.G.?
Ms. Greene, once a steadfast ally of Mr. Trump and his MAGA movement, had a bitter and public break with the president last year over a variety of disagreements, none larger than her support for forcing a vote to release the investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender.
Her seat has been empty since she left Congress in January, a consequential vacancy at a time when the slim Republican majority can afford to lose only a single vote on legislation.
More than a dozen candidates are vying to replace Ms. Greene in a special election with Republicans and Democrats on the same ballot. Because it is unlikely that any candidate will garner more than 50 percent of the vote, the race is nearly guaranteed to head to a runoff.
In a deeply conservative district, the top Republican candidates are Clay Fuller, a former state prosecutor, and Colton Moore, a former state senator and conspiracy theorist whose approach to politics echoes Ms. Greene’s. Mr. Fuller earned Mr. Trump’s endorsement, but that does not guarantee his victory in a deeply conservative district that re-elected Ms. Greene in 2024 by nearly 29 points. Both men are staunch supporters of the president, and voters bucked Mr. Trump’s choice in a high-profile state legislative race in North Carolina last week.
Shawn Harris, an Army veteran and a moderate candidate, is expected to be the top-performing Democrat, most likely setting up a runoff between Mr. Harris and one of the Republican candidates.
The winner of the runoff, scheduled for April 7, will immediately begin serving to complete Ms. Greene’s unfinished term. Meanwhile, a separate race is underway — with many of the same candidates — to win the November election to serve a full two-year term in the same seat. The primaries for that race are scheduled for May 19.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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