In the rolling hills of northwest Georgia, this November’s race for the 14th Congressional District offers one of the clearest philosophical contrasts in modern farm politics: a working cattleman promising boots-on-the-ground producer relief versus a conservative incumbent betting on transportation clout and regulatory rollbacks.
The seat was previously held by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who abruptly resigned in January 2026 following a publicized falling out with President Donald Trump. A competitive special election took place in early 2026, which ultimately resulted in Clay Fuller defeating Shawn Harris in an April 7 runoff (55.9% to 44.1%) to serve the remainder of the term. Now, just months later, the two are facing off again for the full term in the November 2026 general election.
Northwest Georgia is an economic hub for commercial broiler production and cow-calf operations. Decisions on USDA rules, Packers and Stockyards Act enforcement, disease indemnity (e.g., Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza response) and livestock disaster programs depend directly on congressional advocacy.
While the 14th District remains heavily conservative on paper, both campaigns have spent months actively courting the rural and agribusiness vote. Here is a look at the two candidates, their direct ties to agriculture, and why the race matters to producers.
The Challenger: A Producer’s Kitchen-Table Ag Agenda
For Harris, agriculture is his day-to-day reality.
“I’m not somebody that has to be briefed up on agriculture. I live it,” Harris says. Following his interview with Farm Journal, he was going to rotate his cows.
A retired U.S. Army brigadier general who spent 40 years in uniform — starting as an enlisted Marine before earning an agribusiness degree at Tuskegee University — Harris grew up around peanut production in Blakely, Ga. Today, he owns a cow-calf business on family land in Cedartown, raising Red Angus, Angus and Charolais cattle.
Harris has centered his bid on the kitchen-table frictions familiar to any livestock producer. Building a direct farm-to-table and seedstock operation exposes him firsthand to the bottlenecks of securing USDA-inspected processing.
“I wanted to make sure that whatever came off my farm and went to somebody else’s house was checked just as if they went to Walmart or somewhere else,” he explains.
Running as a self-described moderate Democrat, Harris argues party politics has stalled practical policy. His primary legislative goal is to break the stalemate on federal farm legislation.
“No. 1, I want to get there in day one. If the farm bill hadn’t passed, I want to make sure it gets passed,” Harris stresses.
He says lawmakers too often put party priorities ahead of getting work done for farmers.
“I want to make sure that I am laser focused on what is happening in northwest Georgia,” he adds. He says he would seek a seat on the House Agriculture Committee.
His other priorities include addressing farm input costs — such as fertilizer and diesel — and reducing barriers for people trying to enter agriculture. He is concerned that high costs and corporate farmland ownership could make it harder for younger generations, including those without a family farm, to get started.
“If we don’t do something very quickly, the next generation will not be in agriculture,” he says, adding that he sees food production as a national security concern.
Harris also raises concerns about farm profitability and reliance on federal assistance. “I’m concerned that we are getting ourselves in a situation where, as farmers, we’re doing the farming, but we’re not making a profit,” he says.
He explains producers need dependable markets for what they grow and raise. He describes watching live cattle prices fall during the same week he was selling steers and says he believes foreign beef imports and market dynamics deserve attention. He also points to the impact of closed paper mills on timber producers, including in his hometown of Blakely, Ga.
If elected, Harris says he would draw on his military and diplomatic experience to work across party lines. He describes building relationships and negotiating with people who may not share his views as skills he would bring to Congress.
“I don’t have to like you to sit down and have a conversation with you,” Harris summarizes. He says he would look for areas of agreement with lawmakers representing other rural communities and try to move shared priorities forward.
Harris offers voters a candidate who walks pasture ground every day and focuses on anti-monopoly enforcement, input price relief and expanding federal safety nets for family-scale operators.
Harris’s pitch to farmers is his policy views come from working on a farm himself. “At the end of the day, I am just a farmer,” he summarizes.
The Incumbent: Moving Freight and Cutting Red Tape
Republican incumbent Rep. Clay Fuller did not respond to Farm Journal’s request for an interview.
Fuller, a former district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit and a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard, does not claim to run livestock. Instead, his pitch to farm country rests on where he sits in Washington: the House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee.
For Georgia’s sprawling poultry and forestry sectors, distribution reliability is a lifeline. Fuller holds seats on critical T&I subcommittees governing Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials; Highways and Transit; and Water Resources and Environment. In a district where feed grains must reliably roll in by rail and processed broilers and lumber must move out along interstate corridors to domestic markets and the Port of Savannah, Fuller argues committee leverage directly protects growers’ bottom lines.
The Bottom Line for Ag
Come Election Day, northwest Georgia’s farm families face a tactical decision. Do they send an active producer to Congress who promises to fight for a new farm bill, small-farm margins and the next generation of agriculture producers? Or do they back an incumbent who leverages transportation and infrastructure oversight to keep Georgia’s freight moving while holding the line against federal regulation?
In deep-red ag country, the answer will signal what kind of representation rural producers value most: a boots-on-the-ground producer focused on kitchen-table input relief, or a deregulatory conservative leveraging strategic infrastructure committees in Washington.
