Elections in the South on Tuesday showed the power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement and tested Democrats’ appetite for younger challengers to the party’s senior leaders.
In Georgia, voters narrowed a crowded field in a special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican who abruptly resigned from her U.S. House seat after clashing with Trump and arguing he had veered from his “America First” promises. Clay Fuller, Trump’s favored candidate, and a Democrat advanced to an April 7 runoff after no candidate received a majority of the vote.
In Mississippi, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D) — who has served in Congress for more than three decades — faced a primary challenge from a 34-year-old lawyer and former congressional aide who sought to tap into calls for generational change.
Here are key takeaways:
Trump’s pick advances in Georgia
More than a dozen candidates competed to succeed Greene and represent Georgia’s deep-red 14th district. The big question: Could Trump unify the party behind his pick, Clay Fuller, a district attorney in northwest Georgia?
Fuller had about a third of the vote Tuesday night with most of the vote counted, easily beating his top Republican rival, former state representative Colton Moore.
Moore is a hard-line conservative known — like Greene — for rankling party leaders. He clashed with top Republicans while serving in the Georgia Capitol. Fuller and Moore both aligned themselves closely with Trump, but the president rebuffed Moore’s request for support, suggesting the former state lawmaker was too unpredictable.
Local Republicans said they saw notable support on the ground for Moore leading up to the election. But more voters sided with Trump in the end.
Trump has often acted as a kingmaker in GOP primaries, but there are notable exceptions — including in Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in 2022 easily beat back Trump’s handpicked candidate after resisting Trump’s pressure to reject the results of the 2020 election.
While Georgia’s 14th district favored Trump by about 37 points in 2024, Democrats hoped to take advantage of the divided field on Tuesday and win a plurality of the votes. Democrat Shawn Harris, a military veteran who lost to Greene in 2024, led the field with more than 40 percent of the vote Tuesday night and will advance to the runoff.
Greene’s seat has been vacant since she resigned on Jan. 5, narrowing Republicans’ already-tenuous majority in the House. Greene was once a staunch ally of Trump but became one of his biggest critics on the right last year. She questioned his and other GOP leaders’ approach to health care and foreign policy and cast herself as a truer champion of the “America First” movement Trump popularized.
Greene announced plans to resign a week after Trump withdrew his endorsement and declared on social media that all Greene did was “COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!”
Rep. Thompson faces a challenger
Thompson, a 78-year-old congressman first elected in 1993, is one of many older Democrats facing younger primary challengers this year. In North Carolina last week, Rep. Valerie Foushee (D), 69, narrowly beat back her opponent Nida Allam, a 32-year-old liberal endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
Thompson, the only Democrat in Mississippi’s congressional delegation, is well-known. He chaired the House committee that investigated a pro-Trump mob’s Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol. He says he has a track record of delivering for his district over the years.
But his main primary opponent, Evan Turnage, argued Thompson has not done enough for Mississippi’s 2nd District, one of the poorest in the country. In a campaign ad, Turnage told voters “the same old playbook from the ’90s has failed us” and argued, “It’s time to try something different.”
A third Democrat, Pertis Williams, also ran against Thompson. The winner of the primary is likely to go on to represent the blue district, which includes the state capital, Jackson.
Thompson’s primary unfolded as some other senior Democrats in Congress have opted not to seek reelection. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (California), the 85-year-old former House Speaker, announced last year that she would retire. Her longtime No. 2, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Maryland), 86, recently announced he would leave office, too. Other Democrats retiring include Rep. Jerry Nadler, 78, who has represented New York for more than 30 years.
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