Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Primary Challenger Aims to Serve Constituents, Not Chase Celebrity

T here are a great many reasons why Republicans everywhere should want Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) to lose her May 24 primary as she seeks a second term in the House, or to at least be forced into a runoff on June 21 that could lead to her ultimate defeat. Just last week, Representative Greene kicked up another storm by telling Lou Dobbs that joining the U.S. military is “like throwing your life away.”

Today, a Georgia administrative-law judge is hearing a case brought by Greene’s opponents, who are seeking to throw Greene off the ballot for her role in the January 6 Capitol riot. Though legally, that effort ought to fail, given the high bar set by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for disqualifying a public official from office, the image of Greene on the witness stand having to defend her actions — and to be evasive about some of her past bomb-throwing — will not be politically helpful to her.

But at least as important as the national and statewide scenes are the reasons why Greene’s constituents in Georgia’s 14th district are being ill-served by her. Earlier this week, I sat down for a Zoom chat with Jennifer Strahan, Greene’s primary challenger. Strahan comes across as personable and normal in conversation, which is a great contrast to her opponent.

Strahan noted that she is hearing dissatisfaction with Greene from both suburban-Atlanta voters who are new to the district and 2020 supporters of Greene who are having buyers’ remorse. Unlike some other controversial figures in Congress, Greene has only been there for one term, and she won a relatively low-profile primary in August 2020; voters have a lot more information about her now, and they don’t necessarily like what they’ve learned.

In Strahan’s view, this primary race is largely about “effective leadership” and constituent service. “Wannabe celebrities” such as Greene, she says, are too busy chasing headlines around the country to actually do the job, and voters notice that: They’re frustrated by the fact that Greene doesn’t serve on any House committees, and by the paucity of her presence within the district.

Greene was barred from serving on committees in the House — the place where much of the actual work of the lower chamber is done — by Democrats on a largely party-line vote last February. Strahan doesn’t approve of what the Democrats did, but she notes that Greene has expressed the view that committee service is a waste of her time, anyway, and acted accordingly. Strahan herself aims to serve on committees that could put to use her experience in the health-care industry, noting particularly that both the Ways and Means and Appropriations committees have powerful subcommittees dealing with health-care issues. “We have the best health-care system in the world,” she told me, but it still suffers from a lot of “misalignment” of incentives.

As far as constituent service, Strahan shared complaints from people in the district who haven’t seen Greene around and have not found her office responsive to their needs. As Strahan recently told the Daily Mail:

She’s heard frustrations from numerous voters within Greene’s district who feel largely unattended to — including multiple former members of the military. “We have one veteran who’s reached out to her office, I think 10 or 11 times, and hasn’t been able to get a response. And then obviously, we’ve heard others,” she said.

Greene, true to form, did not handle this well:

“This no-name candidate is not insulting me, she’s insulting my staff who are well known and loved by everyone all over our district. My staff have been serving people long before this clueless woman even moved to Georgia,” the representative told DailyMail.com.

“No one knows or cares who this naïve candidate is but everyone knows and loves my staff. I’m proud and truly grateful for all of the hard work my staff has accomplished and couldn’t do it without them.”

She accused the first-time candidate of “spreading lies.”

“This candidate is taking pitiful advice from her DC consultants and not making any friends in NW GA by attacking my well-known and beloved staff in her desperate attempts for attention. She needs to stop lying and she owes my staff an apology,” Greene said.

Pretty rich stuff, given that Greene herself only moved into the 14th district to run for her seat in 2020, and that Fox Chattanooga reporter Josh Roe has backed up Strahan’s account of veterans’ complaints about Greene’s service:

When I asked Strahan what voters in the district are listing as their top concerns in her conversations with them, she said the economy and inflation were the top issue, followed closely by the difficulty of businesses finding workers, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and agricultural-policy issues. On foreign affairs, Strahan was critical of President Biden’s weakness in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine, but notes that 90 percent of voters are now in favor of support for Ukraine that doesn’t require sending U.S. troops (a step Strahan opposes), and that Greene’s views on the Ukraine conflict — which have been quoted enthusiastically by state-owned Russian media — are out of step with the district. (Greene is on record as demanding that Volodmyr Zelensky “stop his military from torturing his own people,” at a time when even Donald Trump has branded the Russian war effort a “genocide.”)

Strahan also took personal umbrage at Greene’s comments on the military, citing her own brother’s Marine Corps service and the military service of both her grandfathers. Such service is a “higher calling” and “not something we should ever belittle based on who is in the presidency,” she said.

I asked Strahan if Georgia is getting a fair shake from the national media, given the stolen-election conspiracy theories that Stacey Abrams has pushed since losing the governor’s race in 2018, and the “Jim Crow 2.0” rhetoric aimed at the state’s new voting and election law, among other things. She laughed. “Is anybody?” she said. She told me that she thought S.B. 202, the voting and election law signed by Governor Brian Kemp, will be “very beneficial” to Georgia in strengthening the integrity of the state’s elections.

On social issues, Strahan, who cited Ronald Reagan as a political role model, said that Republicans in Congress should be prepared to take more pro-life actions in the event that the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this spring.

Strahan is massively outgunned by Greene fundraising-wise, and Greene’s doomed Democratic challenger has raised millions. But Strahan doesn’t need fundraising parity to win, and her campaign has raised a significant amount of money for a primary challenger in its own right. Since launching her bid for the seat in early July, Strahan has raised about $322,615 — a haul that puts her on par with some incumbent lawmakers running for reelection in Georgia. “For a challenger, that’s a decent amount of money,” says Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an election-forecasting publication based at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Anytime a non-incumbent raises more than five figures in a quarter, it catches my attention.” (She’s not done, yet, either: Next week, leaders of the local carpet-and-flooring industry — the biggest industry in the district — are hosting a fundraiser for her campaign.)

Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t going to be defeated by Democrats, and she shouldn’t and likely won’t be removed from the ballot by the courts. But Strahan is offering voters in the 14th District the opportunity for better, more engaged conservative leadership. They’d be wise to consider taking it.