Sack’s post went unnoticed. Despite Greene’s preternatural talent for attracting attention, her obscurity in the political world worked to her benefit in the early months, when her principal competition in the Sixth District’s Republican field was its former congresswoman, Karen Handel. As soon as Greene announced her campaign, she pledged her allegiance as the Trumpiest candidate in the primary: “Everyone knows I support @realDonaldTrump. Always have, right from the start!”
The last part was untrue: Greene did not vote in the 2016 primary, nor did she contribute to Trump’s campaign until a few weeks before he was elected president. What was true was that “right from the start” of her own campaign, Greene was telling local Republicans that she intended to run just as Trump had: all heat and hyperbole, reliant on small online donations and her personal wealth rather than the establishment Republicans who wanted nothing to do with her. Like Trump, she described herself as a successful business owner. His campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again”; hers was “Save America Stop Socialism.”
Few believed she had any chance of winning — probably not against Handel, and almost certainly not in the general election against the incumbent Democrat, Lucy McBath. Then Greene received a decisive break. That December, Tom Graves, the G.O.P. congressman representing the 14th District in northwest Georgia, announced that he would not run for another term, one in a growing number of establishment Republicans who had made for the exits during the Trump era. An open seat, in a district that Trump carried by 53 points in 2016, was suddenly up for grabs. Though Greene had made a virtue of her residency in the Sixth District — even telling the local podcast host Ben Burnett just a couple of days before Graves’s surprise announcement: “I understand our district. I understand it uniquely, because it’s where I’ve always lived, and it’s where I’ve raised my family and worked for so many years” — she would now cheerfully run as a carpetbagger.
Instantly, her political fortunes changed. Running as a Trumpist firebrand in a suddenly vacant seat, Greene received pledges of support from the most prominent conservative in the G.O.P. House, Jim Jordan of Ohio; and Debbie Meadows, the wife of Trump’s eventual chief of staff, Mark Meadows and founder of Right Women PAC. Greene’s campaign staff immediately printed a flyer highlighting Jim Jordan’s seal of approval. Her first campaign ad began with “AOC wants to plunge us into Communism,” referring to Ocasio-Cortez, and ended with “President Trump needs more support in Congress.” After a Black man, George Floyd, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day and nationwide protests erupted, some leading to violence and significant property damage, Greene posted on June 2 on her campaign website a video of herself holding a custom AR-15 pistol, accompanied by these words: “Here’s my message to ANTIFA terrorists: Stay the HELL out of NW Georgia. You won’t burn our churches, loot our businesses, or destroy our homes.”
Already covering two races that could determine control of the Senate, the Georgia media took little notice of the congressional race in the state’s northwestern corner — much less of the wealthy far-right conspiracist who didn’t even live in the district. But in her thousands of doorstep conversations in the 14th District, Greene did not encounter indifference. No one was laughing in her face for describing AOC and Antifa as enemies of America. No one lectured her on the imprudence of wielding a military-style weapon in campaign ads. On the contrary: Walking door to door throughout northwest Georgia, Greene could see very early on, she would tell me more than a year later, that its constituents saw the world through the same lens that she did. Within days, she was certain that a majority of these voters would be hers.
On June 9, 2020, Greene came in first in the G.O.P. primary, 19 points ahead of the establishment Republican who had been expected to win, the neurosurgeon John Cowan. Trump tweeted his approval: “A big winner. Congratulations!” In the August runoff, Greene thrashed Cowan (whose endorsers included the House minority whip, Steve Scalise) by 14 points. At her victory party in Rome that evening, the exultant winner said of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “We’re going to kick that bitch out of Congress.”
The next day, Greene received a congratulatory phone call from the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who later told a confidant (according to that person), “Clearly, I’m going to have to sit her down and tell her that you can’t call the speaker a bitch.” Instead, Greene tripled down. The day she received congratulations from McCarthy, she memorialized her “kick that bitch out of Congress” sentiment on Twitter. The day after that, she told a Georgia radio interviewer: “In a fired-up moment, I did call her a dirty name. But I don’t back down. I don’t apologize.”
