Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., talks with supporters before a rally at the Lorain County Fairgrounds, Saturday, June 26, 2021, in Wellington, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)Seven candidates have announced plans to challenge Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, Ga., in 2022.
Greene serves Georgia's 14th Congressional District, which includes the Northwest Georgia counties of Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Floyd, Gordon, Haralson, Murray, Paulding, Pickens, Polk, Walker and Whitfield.
Since taking office, she has made national headlines as a voice for conservatives and the right, advocating for gun rights and pro-life legislation. She has also been an outspoken advocate of policies of former President Donald Trump and for veterans' rights.
She also was removed from committee assignments, where much of the work of Congress is done, over revelations about controversial social media postings in which she endorsed violence against Democratic leaders and the idea that school shootings have been staged to generate support for gun control.
House Democrats and 11 Republicans voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments earlier this year.
(READ MORE: In Iowa, Marjorie Taylor Greene tests her national appeal)
At home in Georgia, Greene leads the pack in fundraising. She out-raised every other candidate during the first six months of 2021 and, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, raised $3.5 million in small donations alone.
As of June 30, she had raised more than $4.7 million total.
Her challengers have said part of their decision to run came down to wanting better representation in Congress.
Mark Clay (Republican)
Clay filed to run against Greene in the 2022 Republican primary race in April.
According to filings with the FEC, Clay raised $6,000 during the first six months of 2021.
He does not appear to have a campaign website established yet.
Lateefah Conner (Democrat)
Conner, co-founder of the Conner Dental Associates practice in Kennesaw, Georgia, identifies herself as a "wife, mother and businesswoman" who believes in and practices "service leadership."
Conner holds a master's degree in public policy from Rutgers University and a bachelor's degree in natural science from Spelman College. She has worked as a financial administrator managing more than $5 million in state and federal grant funds intended to assist seniors, the homeless and low-income homeowners with home repairs. She also worked as a legislative aide for state Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta. Before that, she served in the Peace Corps, was a member of the Atlanta Black Jewish Coalition and founded an Amnesty International chapter at Spelman.
According to her campaign website, Conner is most proud of a community relations program she developed in 2016 called "Adopt-A-Cop for a Better Cobb County." In subsequent years, she said, she created "Cops Corner" and "#Grab & Go" for police officers to further strengthen the relationship between local law enforcement and the surrounding community.
Conner now serves as board chair of the Kennesaw Public Safety Foundation.
If elected to Congress, Conner has identified four main areas she hopes to address: veterans' rights, education, health care and the economy.
Specifically, she said she hopes to raise the median income in District 14 by bringing in new businesses and industry. She said she will seek out ways to promote and create jobs that support infrastructure, the rebuilding of Georgia highways and bridges and that advance green energy technologies. Conner is also in support of legislation that will focus on maintaining unemployment insurance benefits and payroll assistance for employers.
During the first six months of 2021, Conner raised nearly $80,000, according to the FEC.
(READ MORE: Tennessee, Georgia Republican representatives all backed Marjorie Taylor Greene)
Wendy Davis (Democrat)
Davis, a Rome city commissioner, announced her plans to run in June.
Davis' North Georgia roots go back five generations, and according to her campaign website, her family's commitment to service runs deep. Her father was a World War II veteran and insurance agent, and her mom, a nurse, eventually started her own small business as a seamstress. She credits them with teaching her "the importance of faith, family and community."
Before winning her city commission seat in 2013, Davis led efforts to bring professional baseball to the city. Today, State Mutual Stadium is in its 18th year as the home of the Rome Braves, something she said has brought "millions of dollars in economic impact" to the city, "from the dozens of jobs created to the revenue generated by the visitors who eat, sleep and shop in our region."
Since becoming a commissioner, Davis said, she has cut red tape to help businesses thrive and to make city services more efficient. If elected to Congress, she has vowed to address what she sees as the real challenges facing Northwest Georgia communities: "helping our small businesses get back on track to prosperity, lifting up our kids as they overcome the gaps in their education, supporting families who are struggling through grief and unexpected economic turmoil and reconnecting neighbors who have been pushed apart by those who seek to divide our nation."
"While Washington is deciding how to spend our money to jump-start our economy, reopen our schools and repair our roads, we don't have a seat at the table because our representative is more interested in being a spectacle on cable news and a social media star than in getting results for us. We deserve better," Davis said. "Having worked in federal, state and local offices, I know how government does and should work. As I have proven here in Rome, I know how to make meaningful things happen. My love for our part of Georgia won't let me stay on the sidelines."
During the first six months of this year, Davis raised just over $118,000, according to filings with the FEC.
Marcus Flowers (Democrat)
Flowers, a U.S. Army veteran, joined the service at 18.
In addition to his military service, Flowers spent more than 20 years working as a contractor for the State Department and Department of Defense. He credits the decade he spent in combat zones around the world with giving him firsthand knowledge of how extremism and disinformation impact communities - and he said that is one of the reasons he is running against Greene.
"Her conspiracy theories may have made her famous, but they haven't done a thing to help the people in this district," he said on his campaign website.
Flowers said his beliefs mirror those of the people living in Georgia's 14th District. "Loyalty, duty, honor, respect, service, integrity, unity, courage and fierce love of America and its Constitution" are values he knows he shares with the people he hopes to represent, he said.
On his campaign website, Flowers said he believes in bipartisanship and "bridge-building." He does not believe in vilifying political opponents.
Flowers supports abortion rights because he said he does "not believe the government should be allowed into people's bedrooms" and said the key issues he hopes to address if elected to Congress are health care, the environment, equality, social justice, education reform, veterans' issues, supporting the military and voting rights.
Filings with the FEC show Flowers raised more than $2 million in the first six months of 2021.
Holly McCormack (Democrat)
Ringgold, Georgia, native Holly McCormack announced her plan to run for Congress against Greene in February. If elected, she hopes to revitalize the local economy, strengthen small businesses, expand broadband internet access in rural communities and address the decline of rural health care. Because her father served in the military when she was a child, McCormack said, she has a particular interest in veterans' health care.
One of her long-term goals if elected is to work across the aisle with members of both parties to fund construction of new Veterans Affairs hospitals in rural communities. She also hopes to eventually establish a veterans' cemetery within the district "so that our veterans can rest in a place of honor."
"More than 64,000 residents of GA-14 are veterans, nearly 9% of the total population, yet we have only one VA hospital in the district and no veterans' cemeteries," McCormack said. "We owe a debt to those who've placed their lives on the line to protect our freedom as Americans, and we have to do better to provide for their care and to honor their sacrifices."
Also of concern to McCormack is what she sees as Northwest Georgia's lack of access to the economic opportunities found in metropolitan areas such as Atlanta. She said such opportunities are out of reach for the "almost 15%" of residents in District 14 who live below the poverty line and may not have access to reliable transportation.
If elected to Congress, she said, she will work to support the American Jobs Plan and create an "unprecedented investment" in rural transportation infrastructure. Specifically, she said she will work to increase funding for Amtrak to enable rural corridor expansions, such as the creation of a new Amtrak route from Atlanta to Nashville with a stop in Dalton, Georgia, that would help connect Northwest Georgia to the rest of the state.
"Together, we can build our rural revival, care for one another and bring economic opportunity to our district," McCormack said.
During the first six months of the year, FEC filings show, McCormack raised more than $249,000.
Angela Pence (Libertarian)
Angela Pence was born in Rossville, Georgia, and has spent most of her adult life in Chickamauga, Georgia.
On her campaign website Pence said she cannot "flash degrees" at voters and doesn't have "an impressive financial resume" because she has spent her adult life building businesses and then moving on from them. Rather than seeing that as a negative, she said she believes it makes her the best candidate to represent Georgia's 14th District.
Growing up in the area, she said, taught her what folks there want and believe in. If elected to Congress, she plans to fight for individual freedom, something she said people in Northwest Georgia want more than almost anything else.
Of particular concern to her are "medical freedoms" she feels have been stripped away during the COVID-19 pandemic. On her website, Pence condemned the government for enacting mask mandates and shutdowns, which she said "ruined" small business and the economy.
"We have witnessed one of the most devastating events in history made worse by the fact that our government took advantage of it to force us into a place of submission so that they could continue to gain power at our expense," she said. "I cannot and will not stand by and watch our individual freedoms be stripped away one by one by people that are out for themselves."
Pence said she will focus her campaign around five main issues: gun rights, criminal justice reform, medical freedom, supporting small business and education.
In particular, Pence said she hopes to stand against a criminal justice system that needs to be "dismantled and reassembled from the bottom up."
"As it stands right now, the entire system is rigged to blatantly target and criminalize minorities," Pence said. "Whether those minorities be a different race, religion or lifestyle, we must adopt a criminal justice system that provides justice for all, not just some."
Because her campaign was only recently announced, Pence has not yet submitted to the FEC information about any contributions.
Jennifer Strahan (Republican)
Earlier this month, Georgia businesswoman Jennifer Strahan announced she would be running a Republican primary campaign against Greene in 2022.
In her announcement video, Strahan described herself as a "no-nonsense conservative" and political outsider with a background in health care and technology that she said has given her real-world experience eliminating wasteful spending while increasing access to affordable, high-quality health care.
If elected, she said, she will fight for constitutional freedoms including gun rights, free speech and religious freedoms. She also vowed to support the military and police, defend Trump's policies, control the cost of living and "hold the Biden administration and the radical left accountable for their failures."
Strahan said she was raised to focus on four things: God, family, hard work and education. She worked her way through college, earning a bachelor's degree in biomedical sciences and eventually a doctorate in health care leadership. She went on to work with hospitals and health systems of varying sizes, helping build efficient and effective solutions to drive better patient care and system sustainability, she said.
Eventually, Strahan opened her own national health care-focused advisory firm, J. Osley & Co. Under her leadership, she said the company has trained more than 3,000 people and delivered a bottom-line impact of more than $20 million - while improving patient experience and overall clinical care.
Asked whether her health care background would lead her to approach the challenges of COVID-19 differently than Greene if elected, Strahan said she does not believe in vaccine mandates. Instead, she said, she believes in giving people "accurate, honest information" upon which they can make their own decisions about their health.
Strahan and her husband, who met in high school, have a five-year-old son and attend Atlanta West Pentecostal Church.
"I'm a no-nonsense conservative who believes our country and our culture have gotten off track," Strahan said of her campaign. "We can do better together."
Like Pence, Strahan's campaign is too new to have submitted information about any campaign contributions to the FEC.
The primary to choose party nominees for the 2022 congressional race is scheduled for May 24, 2022.
Contact Kelcey Caulder at kcaulder@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @kelceycaulder.