How Marjorie Taylor Greene can (actually) be Defeated
It’s safe to say that Marjorie Taylor Greene has been stirring up Washington a fair amount.
The Congresswoman, who rose to infamy with her support for QAnon, has been just as controversial as expected. Her beliefs that school shootings, natural disasters and terrorist attacks were all false flags by the government have come to light. She attacked another Congresswoman’s transgender daughter on Twitter. She has spread anti-vaccine propaganda. She’s expressed sympathy for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol. Videos have emerged of her harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Just recently, she compared mask mandates to the Holocaust. The staff she hires are no better than her.
It’s also safe to say that Democrats would like nothing more than to see her lose re-election in 2022. Already, two out of the three Democratic candidates vying to take her on have been making the rounds on Twitter, gaining followers, excitement and, subsequently, donations.
However, Georgia’s 14th district is a district Democrats simply cannot win. President Trump won the district by a whopping 48 points. As we saw in Kentucky last year, all the money in the world will not help a Democrat win in Trump territory. And it seems like Greene’s outspokenness on how the election was stolen and that the insurrectionists on January 6th weren’t Tump supporters strongly resonates with her base.
That being said though, there is a way for Marjorie Taylor Greene to lose re-election… in a primary.
Georgia is one of 15 states with open primaries. Voters do not select a party when they register to vote. Instead, when they vote in primaries, they have the freedom to chose which party’s primary they vote in. So hypothetically, if a voter identifying with one party really didn’t want a particular candidate of the opposite party representing them in Congress, but knew their party could never win the district, they could vote for the candidate’s primary opponent. And if enough of those people cross over to vote for the opponent, the candidate could be defeated.
Believe it or not, it’s actually happened. Another controversial Congresswoman with a record of propelling conspiracy theories and anti-semitism was defeated in her party’s own primary thanks to crossover support for her opponent.
Cynthia McKinney.
McKinney represented Georgia in Congress as a Democrat from 1992 to 2002. During her tenure, she faced allegations of anti-semitism, objected to the results of the 2000 Presidential Election and, like Greene, was known in Congress for her outspoken antics. She angered Republicans in 2002 when she suggested that President George W. Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, but did nothing to stop them. She alleged it was because the Bush family stood to make a profit from investments in military contractors.
During her 2002 re-election bid, she was defeated in the primary by Denise Majette 58 to 42 percent. Many of those voting for Majette were Republicans. And their crossover support was enough to defeat McKinney, despite Al Gore carrying the district by 40 points. She later returned to Congress in 2004 after Majette made an unsuccessful Senate bid, but was defeated again by Hank Johnson in the 2006 primary. McKinney has since ran for President on the Green Party ticket and has doubled down on her beliefs in conspiracy theories and anti-semitism.
In order for the same to happen to Congresswoman Greene, several things must be done.
The Georgia Democratic Party would have to convince its voters in the 14th district to turn out in the primaries to vote against Greene. And they have the numbers. Greene’s Democratic opponent, Kevin Van Ausdal, received more votes in the general election than Greene received in the primary. And, as shown by the 2017 Alabama Senate race, we’ve seen Democratic voters turn out in droves to defeat detestable Republicans.
Now, it would certainly be a challenge getting Democratic voters to turn out in Alabama 2017 numbers to vote for a Republican. But many likely acknowledge that this district would never elect a Democrat, just as Republicans in McKinney’s district acknowledged it would never elect a Republican.
The trouble is, with three Democratic candidates already running, Democratic voters in the 14th district might not be inclined to vote for a conservative Republican when there are candidates of their own party on the ballot. The best thing for the Georgia Democratic Party to do is convince those candidates to drop out.
Greene’s primary challenger would also have to campaign on the same message that Randy Feenstra did when he defeated Steve King in the 2020 primaries; that Greene’s antics are causing the district’s needs to be ignored. Any legislation she has sponsored has had less than 15 co-sponsors. And most importantly, without any seats on committees, she cannot effectively fight President Biden and the Democratic Party’s “socialist agenda.”
Like Feenstra, Greene’s opponent would also have to have support from national conservative groups and local politicians. An endorsement from Ben Shapiro might not hurt either.
While Greene would almost certainly retain the vast majority of Republican support, especially if Trump endorses her, there might be a few Republicans who want more effective representation in Congress and don’t want their district to be the laughing stock of the nation. Especially those who voted for her 2020 primary opponent John Cowan. Those defections, along with crossover votes from Democrats, could be enough to push Greene’s primary challenger over the edge.
This would not be an easy task to accomplish. Even without support from national Republicans and outside groups, Greene has amassed a massive war chest of 3.2 million dollars from 100,000 donors. She could easily mobilize her base to turn out in the primary by painting her primary challenger as a Democratic plant. And Greene’s rhetoric about QAnon is far more engrained in the current Republican Party than McKinney’s 9/11 conspiracies were in the Democratic Party at that time.
Still, if it happened once, it could happen again.