Marjorie Taylor Greene v. Trump looms in Georgia congressional special election

DALTON, GA — Sitting by himself, Carl Hunter enjoyed his breakfast — an omelette served with toast and hashbrowns — at the Perfect Cup, a neighborhood nook that patrons say serves some of best soup in downtown Dalton, Georgia.

Early voting just started down the street at the Whitfield County Courthouse, where residents in a staunchly conservative congressional district are replacing former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican once thought of as President Donald Trump's chief sidekick in Congress.

"I didn't like her personality, I just thought she was way overboard," Hunter told USA TODAY. "I don't know how to describe it, but I just wasn't happy with her. I'm sure she had some good points."

An 87-year-old Army veteran, Hunter moved to Dalton in the late 1950s to work in the rural community's dominant carpet industry. He said it would take some time for him to sort through the 16 candidates hoping to replace Greene, but her "brash" demeanor won't be missed.

"I didn't feel like she was good for the job," Hunter added.

Trump and Greene were once close allies. The former congresswoman was a matriarch of the Make America Great Again movement, who pledged during the 2024 campaign that Trump's return to power would "make us wealthy again."

But that relationship has given way to a public enmity − culminating in Greene's January resignation from Congress − over disagreements such as releasing the Justice Department's files on sex offender and former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein. Their falling-out threatens to divide the MAGA coalition in the 2026 elections.

At the outset of the midterm primaries Trump is waging war against detractors within the GOP ranks and hoping to remain the party's kingmaker by having his preferred candidate — Clay Fuller, a state prosecutor — pull off a dominant performance on March 10. Trump is headlining a rally in the district on Feb. 19.

On the day U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Fuller said he wants to triple the budget for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and nominate every ICE agent for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"When I'm on Capitol Hill, I'm going to have President Trump's back. I'm going to have ICE agents' back," he said in a Jan. 24 X post.

"We have a lot of people who want to take Marjorie 'Traitor' Greene's place," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Feb. 16, when early voting began. "Many, many candidates and I have to choose one and they say whoever I endorse is going to win."

Georgia's 14th Congressional District, in the northwest corner of the state, grazes Atlanta's suburbs and stretches into the mountainous Appalachia region that borders Tennessee. It's rated as 19 points more Republican than the country as a whole, according to the Cook Political Report.

But Trump's popularity is facing a record low ahead of the midterms, polls show, and Greene's is just one of several noteworthy defections among some conservative members of Congress.

Greene performed slightly better than Trump in the district when she first ran in 2020, outpacing the president by about 1.5 percentage points. But she received 8 points less support than Trump in the district in 2024.

"This very public spat with Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Fort Sumter of the MAGA civil war, and it started with the Epstein files and the way in which the Trump administration has mishandled this," Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, told USA TODAY.

"The fact that she started as someone who was so vocally supportive of Donald Trump and was seen as someone who was a torch holder of MAGA for so long, for her to speak out and point out those things, particularly during the last shutdown, that was an inflection point."

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Much of the contest has been marked by the Trump and Greene beef, but conservative activists and longtime political players warn that outsiders should be careful in overestimating the impact of her defection.

Republican strategist Chip Lake, who served as a senior adviser to former football star Herschel Walker's 2022 U.S. Senate campaign in Georgia, said it is "fair to characterize it as a political divorce" between the two, but that Trump remains beloved.

"Marjorie has been very public about the fact that she's changing her political brand and when that happens you're going to win some new people and you're going to lose some of the people that you had," Lake said. "Voters can have a favorable opinion of both the president and Marjorie, and still pick Donald Trump in the divorce."

Trump endorsing Fuller didn't do much to clear the field but it is considered the best predictor of where MAGA-aligned voters will flock.

Just two out of the 18 contenders dropped out after the president's announcement in support of Fuller, who has defended Trump's economic record and fiercely backed his immigration enforcement operation.

The remaining crop of candidates, including former state Sen. Colton Moore, who gained national attention last year after being arrested at the state capitol for allegedly resisting an order that banned him from entering the state House chambers after he insulted the late Georgia House speaker.

Moore has referred to Greene as a "wrecked sailboat in a windstorm" on social media while being endorsed by big names in conservative circles, such as gun rights activist Kyle Rittenhouse.

If no candidate receives a majority, the election would go to a runoff between the top two finishers. That's a likely outcome, experts say, because of the large number of candidates, which includes Shawn Harris, the lone Democrat.

"I was disappointed in the name calling. I think we are losing some decorum with the offices. It's probably time for a revamp," 71-year-old Patrick Carrell said outside the Whitfield County Courthouse, where early voting began Feb. 16.

He was "a little glad," Greene stepped away, adding that even as a Republican he didn't vote for the congresswoman, who is known for making incendiary comments such as when she compared COVID-19 mask mandates to the Holocaust in 2021. (She later apologized.)

Some Republicans in the district who had supported Greene expressed chagrin at her falling out with Trump.

"She seemed like a very staunch supporter of President Trump, which I was very pleased of, plus she is here in Georgia, and then all of a sudden just quit," Michael DePaolo, a 62-year-old Air Force veteran in Rome, Georgia, said. "I was always taught you never quit."

On the flip side, Democrats in GA-14 are pleased to see their opponents being divided.

Sandra Spong, 78, said she was at the Rome elections center on Feb. 17 "to do the right thing," and pulled the lever for Harris, a retired brigadier general who lost to Greene by roughly 29 percentage points in the 2024 election. The longtime Democrat noted Trump used to praise Greene but "now he's calling her terrible names."

Epstein files not a top priority for voters

Despite the Epstein files being at the center of Greene's split with Trump, it wasn't been highlighted by many voters as a key issue.

"While I do want the files released, there were more important issues to focus on," Gregory Washington, 28, who works in Dalton's public defenders office. Washington said he was more focused on the economy, tariffs and immigration.

Trump is expected to tout his economic policy agenda during the Feb. 19 visit, which is part of a larger nationwide rally tour to mobilize his base in the 2026 congressional elections.

A Pew Research Center poll released Jan. 29, for example, found 56% of Republicans said they supported all or most of Trump's ideas, down from 67% who said the same thing last year.

"The numbers look good," Carrell said, referring to economic indicators like the stock market, "but I'm retired and from my personal standpoint, our monthly expenses have gone up through the roof, primarily food and insurance." .

DePaolo said he voted for Moore — a candidate whose website describes him as Trump's "#1 Defender" running with the slogan: "God. Guns. Trump." He said the former state lawmaker is "picking the ball up from where (Greene) left it off," but that the Epstein files aren't on the top of his mind.

Instead, he liked that Moore has focused on "getting (undocumented immigrants) out of here," gun rights and countering China's growing global influence.

'You've been brainwashed': Where does MTG go from here?

Greene jabbed back at Trump's insults on Feb. 17 by accusing his administration of intentionally using the conspiracy theory group known as QAnon to manipulate supporters who she says are rightfully focused on the still unfolding Epstein files saga.

"Wake up," Greene said in a post on X, replying to a woman who said she worked on Trump’s campaigns. "You've been brainwashed."

Asked about Greene's suggestion on X, the White House blasted their former congressional ally.

"President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican Party," Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman told USA TODAY. "Marjorie Taylor Greene is a former congresswoman, traitor and a quitter."

Greene, who could not be reached for comment, has said she won't endorse a candidate to succeed her. Several GOP operatives in Georgia told USA TODAY a Greene endorsement would harm a candidate after her clash with Trump.

Brian Robinson, a longtime staffer for former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, said the spat did nothing to dent Trump's popularity while he said Greene's stock took a hit.

"Polling numbers in her district certainly took a nosedive when people saw her as posting up on President Trump, but I'd imagine there's still a lot of good feeling toward her there," he said.

Some say the beef stems from the White House reportedly pushing Greene out of the 2026 Georgia race against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.

Trump's political team commissioned a poll showing Greene losing to Ossoff by double digits, The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2025. The president is said to have shared the results with Greene and urged her not to run.

Robinson worked on the 2020 Republican primary campaign for neurosurgeon John Cowan, who lost to Greene by 15 percentage points in the run-off before easily winning the general election. He said the White House was being practical about Greene's chances.

"Her profile does very well in her overwhelmingly Republican district," Robinson said. "She can go and do the bombast and make edgy statements and take edgy positions. She can do all that, and her people could love it. She is not someone who would do well statewide in a Georgia general election."

That overwhelmingly Republican profile means the district will likely soon have a representative with the same pro-Trump fervor Greene had six years ago.