Not all Georgia Republicans need extra Marjorie Taylor Greene

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will not return to Congress for a second term without meeting opposition from Republicans in her Georgia district, where multiple challengers are trying to knock her out in the GOP primary.

Greene is still heavily favored to win a second term, but her opponents underscore the frustration some in the party have with congressmen’s relentless focus on extreme rhetoric versus actual legislation.

“I am very concerned about the direction of our country. We need a serious representative who really wants to do the work, who wants to go to committee hearings, who wants to serve the constituents, who wants to work with colleagues to make meaningful policy – and quite frankly today we don’t have that,” one of her challengers , 35-year-old Jennifer Strahan told HuffPost.

Greene’s GOP critics say their antics may have established them nationally, but they’re embarrassing their constituents in Georgia’s 14th congressional district. A year into her tenure, Greene was removed from committees for encouraging anti-Democrat violence. She has written articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, promoted baseless voter fraud conspiracies, campaigned for the defendants of the January 6 Capitol riot and forfeited a large portion of her paycheck in fines for refusing to wear a mask indoors.

For Democrats, Greene is the face of an increasingly extreme and divisive Republican party, while the GOP recently martyred her for spreading bad information about COVID-19, leading to her being banned from Twitter and Facebook.

“When the Silicon Valley monopolists silenced Donald Trump and kicked him off social media when they did the same thing to Marjorie Taylor Greene, it should alarm all of us,” said JD Vance, a Republican who represents the US government. Running for Senate in Ohio, said at a town hall last week.

During a telephone council in November, Greene revealed she doesn’t change her tone when she addresses her constituents, who she asked to comment on topical issues such as vaccination mandates, election reviews and the Infrastructure Act.

“Do you support Congresswoman Greene’s stance that the 13 House Republicans who voted for Biden’s communist infrastructure bill betrayed their party?” She pleaded with callers, telling them to “press one” if they agree be.

“I work for you,” Greene later told them. ”[Lawmakers] work for you.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) speak on the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

Greene beat neurosurgeon John Cowan by 14 percentage points in the 2020 Republican primary and then won 75% of the general election vote in a deep red bastion, making her tough to beat now as an incumbent.

Even her critics say most people in the district love her despite the opposition.

“I can’t speak for all of the districts in the 14th district, but I can speak for three or four that I go to regularly. She is loved. They just love her to pieces,” said Tom Pounds, who left the Dade County GOP over frustration with Greene and the political climate in Georgia, which has faced arraignment since Donald Trump blamed fraud for his 2020 election loss and the two Senate seats of the state were turned over to Democrats a year ago.

“She’s stripped all her committees for good, so now all she has to do is make a name for herself,” Pounds said. “And she does that very well out there in front of the cameras.”

Incumbents who win by a landslide generally don’t face strong opposition from within their parties, but Greene is not a typical incumbent. As a business owner and fitness trainer who rode Trump’s coattails into office in 2020, Greene rose to fame almost immediately as a so-called QAnon congressman for her adherence to the insane conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of Democratic pedophiles.

The biggest complaint from anti-Green Republicans is that they can’t effectively represent their constituents without sitting on some committees that help lawmakers direct money and resources to their districts.

Kicking a member out of committees is a rare move, commonly used as punishment for convicted criminals or members who stand against leadership. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) was relieved of his committee duties in 2019 for making comments on white supremacy that were condemned by both parties. He lost in the 2020 Republican primary in Iowa, ending his political career.

Greene’s critics believe she will ultimately meet the same fate.

“I think her effectiveness as a member of Congress is her biggest Achilles’ heel,” said Jason Shepherd, formerly the Republican Party leader in Cobb County, Georgia. “It’s one thing to go to Washington DC and bang your fist and say, ‘We’re not going to take it. I will stand up for the people.” But she can’t stand up for the people because she can’t get anything done.”

Her most active opponents in the GOP primary include Strahan, a small business owner and healthcare executive, and Charles Lutin, a retired doctor, both newcomers. Four Democrats — including an Army veteran, Marcus Flowers, who has already raised more than $3 million — and a Libertarian are also running in the 14th district, which covers part of northwest Georgia.

Lutin, whose campaign page features an xed-out photo of Greene on its homepage, told the Atlanta Jewish Times that his Jew pushed him to run as a “moderate” against Greene, who he said had a ” well-deserved reputation as an anti-Semite.” Greene has compared mask and vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany and suggested that the California wildfires were caused by a space laser controlled by the Jewish Rothschild family.

“To be honest, part of my motivation is that I’m Jewish myself and I can’t face the thought of it [Greene] to serve indefinitely and to represent our state in such an intolerable way,” Lutin, 68, told the Jewish Times.

Strahan, who is “very conservative,” said the district doesn’t need a representative more concerned with being a celebrity than fighting back against Biden’s agenda.

“I’m going to be in the room with decision-makers, not running across the country on a media tour,” Strahan said.

“Our district doesn’t have a seat at the table, and that doesn’t give us an opportunity to push back on these very liberal and progressive policies that don’t bring back value to our constituents,” she said.

Greene’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this article.

With more than $6 million in the bank at the end of the campaign, Greene will be hard to beat. But their opponents cling to the hope that it can succeed. A recent Jewish Insider poll showed that although 60% of GOP primary voters would vote for Greene, Strahan managed to get 30% of the vote.

The reallocation isn’t expected to materially change Greene’s election outcome, though she does get more Democratic votes in the Atlanta suburbs. Census data from 2019 shows the borough is predominantly white and lags the nation in both high school graduation rates and median household income — which, at $56,000, is less than what Greene is giving up because she refuses to pay at her work to wear a mask.

Greene has already lost $90,000 of her $174,000 annual congressional salary because of the mask penalties, The Hill reported.

John Cowan, Greene’s former neurosurgeon opponent, said Greene sets a bad example for all conservatives.

“I think she’s acting in a very self-serving, catchy way and playing on people’s fears,” said Cowan, who isn’t competing this year but might in the future.

“Not everyone is connected to Twitter or the national news. They spend five minutes once a week looking at what Marjorie is doing and they have to give the impression that she’s fighting for us because she’s on the news a lot,” he said.

“If people really started looking under the hood at how she’s acting, I think they’d realize that maybe Trump can get away with some of that, but our representative doesn’t have to go around the country playing the fool.”