Shawn Harris, a farmer in northwest Georgia who served in the military for 40 years before retiring as a U.S. citizen, is challenging the congressional seat currently held by far-right U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
He connected with the Washington Blade last week to explore his election as a Democrat in Georgia’s deep-red 14th Congressional District — and why his promise to deliver for the electorate, who have been failed by their recent member, is resonating with voters across the political spectrum.
“I am the lead candidate on the Democratic side as of right now,” according to Harris, who also has three other opponents in the primary: Marcus Flowers, another Black senior and Democrat who ran against Greene in 2022, and VoteVets, which is supported by more than 700,000 donors and supporters.
According to Harris, “This culture is currently facing a condition where the district’s Democrats, Republicans, and politicians are actually now certainly looking at Marjorie Taylor Greene and saying, ‘She has been up there for three and a half terms.’ What has she really done for the neighborhood?”
He claimed that voters are telling him, “I hear her always yelling about, you know, impeaching someone, but I don’t know what she has actually done for the district.”
Harris noted that Greene claimed credit for bringing millions of dollars in national system expenditure to her neighborhood a few weeks ago, but she later retracted the claim because the money was obtained through a bill she had voted against and was then paid for by President Biden and the Biden-Harris management.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is in a situation where she is at conflict with the Republican Party,” he said. “She hates every Democrat that walks the face of the earth, and on top of that, she doesn’t have everything that she can have on that says what she’s really done around inside the city — so we have a clear way to truly beat her.”
“We have taken all Marcus did right and brought it to our team,” according to Harris, based on information we received from him about what went well, what he thought he could improve, and how he raised the money. “Errors that he had, we looked at it and went with a different view — but where I’m at best today, we’re going to every zip code in Northwest Georgia; Nobody is being overlooked by us.”
Harris said he has secured aid from Democrats, politicians, “and we have figured out how to get Democrats to even ballot for me.”
“People can understand how Harris’s life and career relate to them,” he said. “I was military and I was high-level military,” he said. Republicans can, therefore, look up my name and story using a very simple formula. My most recent project was in Israel. So that was a pretty high-level place.”
“The next part, according to Harris, is that I raise animals. I raise Red Angus animals. I’m really staring at them from my business right then.”
He noted that agriculture dominates Georgia’s economy, particularly “cattle and wineries,” and also said he is an active member of the Georgia Cattlemen’s Association and U.S. Association of Cattlemen.
“Most ranchers, at least here in this area, are Republicans,” Harris said, so during the group’s discussions, “they get a chance to meet me just as Shawn, just as another farmer. He continued, “They come out here and explore me on the plantation” and vice versa.
“We assist one another when there are issues with the land, and Harris recently said he has been hearing worries about Greene’s opposition to the Farm Bill because it provides funding for SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), despite the fact that the act also provides funding for “when farmers have drought, hurricanes, tornadoes, or like the flames that really happened out in Texas; it helps them to remove whatever they lost.”
“We all raised money to send to the farmers out there to try to help them get back on their feet during this previous cattlemen’s association [meeting] two days ago,” Harris said. “What they’re saying to me is, ‘in three and a half years, Marjorie Taylor Greene has never been to a cattlemen’s association-type meeting somewhere. Okay, now? You now consider that.”
According to Harris, “I only told you that agriculture is the number one business up here in North Georgia, north Georgia. Additionally, she doesn’t even visit that particular group because she doesn’t want to talk to them?”
He said, “I believe she sees it as though she is beneath it.” We are just regular people, hardworking everyday people, and we don’t get to sit around and watch the news and Twitter and other kinds of stuff, so you have to leave their homes and go out into the pasture and perhaps offer some assistance to them.”
Harris said when he visits various ranchers and farmers, they frequently say, “You know, that person was a general and he came over and helped you put your calf up in now. That is unbeatable. That is how you change hearts and minds.”
He anticipates that the experience will also help them say, “OK, it’s OK to vote for Donald Trump,” but on “the second line [on the ballot] that will say Shawn Harris and Marjorie Taylor Greene,” these people might choose to support the Democratic candidate, or “if they don’t, the math starts going in my favor either way.”
“We have Republicans who have already come to me and are stomping at the bit and are ready to put up signs, big signs in their pastures that will say, ‘I’m voting for Shawn,'” Harris said.
He also touched on how important his military service is in terms of assisting veterans in Northwest Georgia. “[We veterans are] just as diverse as everybody else,” Harris said. And I’m going to talk to that group because I’m a veteran and 100 % disabled, so I know what they’re going through,” especially when it comes to the difficulties of receiving medical care and other services from the U.S. S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
So when I talk to my fellow brothers and sisters who are veterans, Harris said, “I talk about those issues and say, ‘You know what?’” I’m going to work with Sen. to fix this issue. [Jon ] Ossoff and all of the senators to get at it, but that’s one of the things that Ossoff is really working on up here in Northwest Georgia.”
Harris claimed that his extensive research and interaction with veterans, famous people, cattlemen, teachers, and other people informed many of the policy positions outlined on his website.
“In some of the different places that we’ve been, the LGBT community has been there and asked me some questions on where I stand. And I made it very clear that everyone should receive a fair shake, just like I did when I was in the military, and that is in stark contrast to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s position.”
Harris added that he has not yet had a formal meeting with members of the LGBTQ community, “but that community has already come to the other things and asked the question and I didn’t shy away from the question — that happened up there in Rome, Georgia.”
When asked if Harris’ support for LGBTQ rights, he responded with “no” and was prepared to face opposition from conservative constituents.
Because his voters “are picking me because I’m a leader,” he said, “I’m not worried about any backlash or anything,” he added. “I’m going to listen to the people in my district, but I’m also going to vote and do the right thing for everyone in the district,” he said.
Despite the efforts by Greene to “make everything seem like it’s to the extreme” including with respect to matters of LGBTQ rights, Harris said that in reality “most people out here — I don’t care if you’re Black, white, blue, or green — most people out here are laser-focused on how they can get a high-paying job so that they don’t have to drive to Atlanta or drive to Chattanooga, Tennessee, or drive all the way over to Huntsville, Alabama” for work.
They travel these distances for work, Harris said. “They stay there for the week and come back on Friday.” Because either the husband or the wife is working two or three hours away from here, and so they are not here during the week, we are breaking up the family dynamics in our area.
“And this is how I thread this thread,” Harris said, “is what I’m trying to do. I want people to stay in this area, start a family, and realize the American dream.”
Serving the needs of people in GA-14
Harris claimed that Greene has discouraged investment in her district by supporting both her extremism and refusal to work with Democrats and, in many cases, other Republicans.
When decision-makers have the opportunity to make a decision, they have to make whatever is the best decision for their organization because people are people, he said. But if they say, ‘wait a minute, the person who is representing that area doesn’t seem like they want to be a team player,” then the calculus becomes, “‘where else can we take our business?”
“What I want to do is work closely with the space and defense sectors to determine where we can relocate from Huntsville or whatever the next hot item will be brought into the district,” Harris said.
He recalled a conversation with a former U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, who Harris was briefed in Israel, stated in an interview that the Alabama Republican stated that Huntsville, Alabama is the home of almost everything that the military does when it comes to the defense sector or space.
Shelby told Harris that “he wanted to make sure that in his district, no matter whether you had a GED or a Ph.D., everyone could land a high-paying job.”
“Why can’t we bring it right here,” Harris said, “because we have people who are already driving to these other places” to find this kind of work? We only need the right representative to persuade people to come here and conduct business with us because we have plenty of land, plenty of space, and nothing but opportunity to make it happen.
According to Harris, “I want to make sure that everyone has the same opportunities Marjorie Taylor Greene did to have a company here, to do what they want to do with their lives, and Marjorie is preventing people from having those opportunities,” she said.
He added, “Her job in Washington, D.C., is to ensure that we receive federal funding in this area so that we don’t get left behind. What worries me is that if we continue to fight and argue, our area of Georgia will lose an opportunity.”
Additionally, “Marjorie Taylor Greene is in a fight with Governor. Harris made note of Republican Party candidate [Brian] Kemp] and their organization. “Hence, when the state is doing certain things, we’re missing out on certain opportunities simply because Marjorie Taylor Greene is in a civil war with them.”
The main objective, according to Harris, is to make sure we are all on the same sheet of music so that we can improve things for the people around here from the federal level down to the state level and the local level.”
How to defeat MTG
Harris said, “Marjorie Taylor Greene came in at the right time for whatever she’s trying to make herself look like. “She basically came into the district — when I say came to the district, she moved from the Atlanta area into the district. And as Donald Trump was ascending, she was one of the first to ride in behind him and ride his coattails.”
In the years since she began serving in Congress in 2021, he noted, Greene has managed to convince many rural constituents to believe what she is saying, “based on the information that she puts out here,” often through “soundbites.”
However, Harris said that frequently “because they have met me” or because they have relocated from other parts of the country, people are starting to say, ‘wait a minute, what she’s telling us is not true. And we can do better.””
Marjorie Taylor Greene is regarded as my greatest asset, he said. “She does something every day that actually helps me. She wants to remove the House Speaker so the budget can be passed while the government is still in place. At the end of the day, we in our district are not wealthy here, OK, if the government shuts down. We will feel it a lot faster than somebody running around New York City.”
She is not even taking into account how this is going to affect the people in this district when she is saying those things, Harris said.
“Across the board, everybody is embarrassed on how she conducts herself up there in Washington, D.C. because she represents us all down here in Northwest Georgia, making us all look like a bunch of idiots,” he continued.
“And if they get in behind me, and we win this thing, you would never ever have to deal with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s craziness again,” Harris said. Because I don’t even want to repeat some of the outrageous things she has said about numerous communities, many communities, and that is what gives me the drive to put things in place every day to defeat her.”
The campaign, Harris said, is going to get ugly. I run into the Marjorie Taylor Greene people who are very bold on social media.”
For instance, “Somebody took my picture and posted it and said, ‘hey, 90+ percent of the people that look like this guy here are the ones committing crimes. But, wait, what? Because I spent so many years in the military and am a leader, I didn’t get upset. I said, ‘you know what, OK, got it. Let’s return optimistic. We came back optimistic. And the whole Twitter universe said, ‘Oh, that’s the leader that we want.’”
Harris said, “I wouldn’t be running unless I thought I could win.” Up first is Georgia’s Democratic primary election on May 21.
The number needed for me to win the primary is 15,029, according to Harris, who said, “And that gives me a 54% of the votes, so that would be a decisive win” and help the campaign to “continue to work on more independents and more Republicans to come over to us.”
Looking ahead to the general election on Nov. According to Harris, “I need help throughout this country because it will take a lot of money to beat Marjorie Taylor Greene,” and our area is not the richest part of Georgia.
“So, in order to pull all of these things off, I’m actually appealing to the people on the ground,” he said, “I’m going to every zip code and talking to everyone face-to-face.” However, if you go to my social media profile, you can see that I am on every platform available. Every platform. So we are engaged in physical combat on social media and in person.
“Marcus Flowers showed us, as Democrats, how to raise a lot of money in these types of races,” Harris added. “We have to get to the primary, but we try to save as much as possible so that we have a war chest when we go over into the general, and I am blessed that people are believing in me and actually want to give their hard-earned dollars to our campaign.”
With respect to current fundraising targets, he said, “we have a very good start right now.”
However, to win in November, Harris said, “it will take millions of dollars. “So we’re constantly asking people, ‘please go to my campaign page and donate, and if you can’t donate, you can just pray for us.'”
Harris pointed to Democratic Kentucky Gov. After a difficult race in his “ruby red” state, Andy Beshear made a successful reelection bid last year. He mentioned all the things that President Biden and Vice President Harris are doing with people, including taking care of people, and all of those things, including insulin, the nine, and he mentioned those things,” Harris said. “That’s what I’m doing here.
