Republican Clay Fuller is projected to have won Georgia's runoff election to replace former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a once-staunch ally of Donald Trump who resigned earlier this year after breaking with the president.
Fuller won the election to replace her on Tuesday, according to CBS News, the BBC's US partner. He is a Trump-endorsed candidate who won against Democrat Shawn Harris, and his victory keeps the staunchly conservative district in Republican hands.
The win shores up the party's razor-thin 217-214 majority in the House of Representatives.
Fuller, a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard, will serve out the rest of Greene's term, which ends next January.
A special election was held on March 10 where Harris performed marginally better than Fuller, partly due to a crowded Republican field splitting the vote. No single candidate won a majority that night, requiring Tuesday's runoff election.
In order to hold the seat in Congress beyond next January, Fuller will have to immediately start campaigning again, this time for the midterm elections this November. It's possible he will face off with Harris again.
Fuller, who was a White House fellow during Trump's first term, is closely aligned with the president's agenda, particularly on curbing illegal immigration and enacting mass deportations.
He rose to the top of a crowded Republican primary field in large part due to Trump's endorsement. Washington closely followed the race from afar for indications of Trump's sway with his base ahead of the midterm elections.
In general, part of President Trump's strategy in endorsing Fuller was this recognition that the most red meat, MAGA-affiliated candidate in this particular instance, might be off-putting to voters in the middle, said Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science at Emory University. This was an attempt to not lose those voters.
The president doubled down on his support for Fuller on Monday night, writing on social media ahead of election day: I am asking all Republicans, America First Patriots, and MAGA Warriors, to please GET OUT AND VOTE for a fantastic Candidate, Clay Fuller, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement!
Harris had bet on the unpredictable dynamics of the runoff, which occurs outside a typical election cycle when voter turnout may be low, hoping it would allow him to bring out enough Democratic and Independent voters to pull off a surprise victory.
Georgia's 14th congressional district encompasses the northwest part of the state, from the northwest Atlanta suburbs all the way up to the Tennessee border. The mostly-rural district is dominated by Republicans but has pockets of Democratic voters in areas closer to Atlanta and around the city of Rome.
Trump had repeatedly chimed in on the race, with hopes to keep it in Republican hands. The party has a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, meaning even just a few Republican defections could derail a vote.
