Would Cowan vote for Greene? “That’s just a decision between me and the Lord,” he said, and laughed.
Saville, who said she felt intimidated by the messages she received from Greene and Justin Kelley, told me that she was going to vote for Greene anyway. “I certainly don’t want to give any more seats to Nancy Pelosi,” she said. “I remain a Republican.” A local Party official, who asked to remain anonymous—and who assured me that he does not believe in QAnon, and that “ninety per cent of the people in that district don’t know who Q is”—said, of Greene, “There’s nothing she can do to lose my vote, unless she murdered a baby or something. Nothing.”
On September 8th, I drove to a north-Georgia strip mall where, in a hot, windowless room beside the Dalton Serenity Club, the Whitfield County Republicans were holding their monthly meeting. Greene was the main draw. Around seventy people—generally elderly, largely unmasked, almost universally white—congregated under fluorescent lights. By the entrance was a table holding items for sale, including a Trump doll (made in China) and a few copies of the book “Triggered,” by Donald Trump, Jr. A retired landscaper named John Agnew, wearing cowboy boots and sitting in the back, waited for Greene to speak. “I’ve seen so many Republicans get in Washington and, as soon as they get up there, they fall in with the crowd and they won’t stand on what they said,” he told me. Greene was different, he believed. Agnew said he wasn’t familiar with QAnon. I asked about his decision not to wear a mask. “Wear them if you want to,” he said, shrugging. “Some meetings I’ll wear them, some I won’t. If I get it, I get it. I don’t want somebody else telling me what to do.” Next to him was a carpet-industry retiree named Bill, who hadn’t heard of QAnon, either. He liked Greene’s “stances on abortion and guns, and her commercials going against the A.O.C. group—whatever you want to call it. A woman needs to be up there to counteract some of the women that are there already.” He added, “I trust her. I just feel it.” He said that he’d prayed with Greene months earlier, holding hands, “and I just felt God was telling me, ‘Pray for her.’”
Greene walked to the lectern in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt that showed off her biceps. She turned to a cutout of Trump propped up on her right. “I just love this guy so much,” she said, stroking the cardboard. In the next few minutes, she mentioned socialism five times. “The Democrat Party is no longer an American party,” she said. She decried the Green New Deal and the Paris climate accord. She talked about “good guys with guns at schools” and “abortion mills, like Planned Parenthood,” drawing responses of “Amen!” and “That’s right!” She mentioned “communists, Antifa, Marxist Black Lives Matters,” and said that “the silent majority has had enough.” Trump, she said, turning to the cutout again, “works for us for free. He’s fantastic. This guy right here is great!” Earlier that day, she had tweeted that children should not wear masks, which resulted in a brief suspension from Twitter. “How do we have p*rn on Twitter, but conservatives can’t speak their freedom of speech?” she asked, at the mall.
At one point, she called attention to a man in the room. “My friend Matt over here, from the New York Times, who—I really want to be friends with him,” she said. “You know, it’s really sad, though. Americans don’t trust the media anymore.” The next day, Greene tweeted a photo of the reporter, Matthew Rosenberg, and noted that he had not been wearing a mask at the event. “UNMASK the CCP-controlled @nytimes!” she wrote, suggesting that the Times answers to the Chinese Communist Party.
After the event, four middle-aged women stood outside the mall, in the darkening parking lot. They introduced themselves as Lisa, Candice, Tammy, and Kristy.
“Margie,” one said, referring to Greene, “is like the female version of Trump to me. Everything that she believes in goes along the same line as what I believe in.”
“What we were raised on,” another said.
“What grabbed my attention towards Marjorie is the fact she was out with the people that she was going to represent.”
“Every time you’d turn, there was Marjorie.” Greene had come to an event in downtown Dalton in support of a Confederate statue. She’d shown up at the Biscuit Box, where she’d campaigned from a drive-through window. “She’s everywhere.”
“Matter of fact,” another said, “there she is now.”
The group called over to Greene, who was walking to her car with Kelley. “Bye, Marjorie! We love you!” Greene shouted back, “I love you, too!”
“It don’t matter if you’re the janitor or the President,” one said as Greene drove off.
“She is pro-God, she’s pro-life, she’s pro-guns,” another said. “And we’re hunters, and we’re all about the Second Amendment. When she started talking that, she sold me quickly. She just got me on board quick.”
I asked them about QAnon and Greene’s relationship to it. They were mostly well versed on the subject.
“Some people say it’s conspiracies. Some people say it’s facts,” one said. “If you see any of it, read any of it—they always give you names. You’re welcome to search it for yourself. Because the information is there.”
“When I get home, I’m gonna do some Googling,” one said.
“It’s really starting to surface more with people. I’m wanting to learn more and more.”
A fifth woman walked up. “She’s a ball of energy!” she said, of Greene. The fifth woman joined the conversation about QAnon. “Before Trump was elected, you heard nothing,” she said. “You believed the media.” She went on, “Then he gets elected and starts putting these little tidbits out here. And you’re thinking. And then you start seeing it for yourself. You see where the media has lied. Then it’s gonna put suspicion up here”—she tapped her head—“so when that stuff does come out people are gonna start thinking, Well, it could be true, you don’t ever know.”
Someone mentioned Jeffrey Epstein, and someone else mentioned a three-hour documentary that claims to expose an “evil masterplan to completely dominate the world” by a liberal “illuminati” engaged in pedophilia, Satanism, central banking, and more, all explained by “the enigma of Q.” One of the women called it “very worth listening to.” (Having since watched it myself, I would politely disagree.) “It is gonna tell you things that is going to blow your mind about all these powerful people out there,” she said. She told the group she’d text them a link later.
“Why do you think the Democrats are so hate, hate, hate right now?” one asked.
“Because they’re controlled by Satan.” Nodding.
“That’s right. They want to control everybody else. They want to control people with fear. O.K.? They’re wanting to control people by their pocketbook.”
There was talk of Pizzagate and the mainstream media. Polls saying that Joe Biden was leading Donald Trump were a lie, they agreed.
“If you want to know the truth, research,” one said.
“That’s what QAnon is about,” another said, before heading off into the night with her Marjorie Taylor Greene button. “Checking facts.”
Three days later, on a warm Friday afternoon, Rome was bustling. Restaurant patios on Broad Street were packed. At two of them, diners were flanked by Trump signs, which someone had placed in seats. But the reopening of the local Republican Party headquarters, inside a brick building plastered with more Trump signs, was not well attended. Greene was the event’s headliner, but she was running late, apparently because she’d taken a call from Debbie Meadows, the wife of Trump’s chief of staff. As we waited, I spoke to Nancy Burton, a retired schoolteacher, who told me that Trump “hung the moon and some of the stars.” She added, “I don’t want to be a socialist. I don’t want to be a Marxist. I don’t want to be anything. I want to be American and I want to be Christian, if I choose to. And I choose Christianity.”
Justin Kelley, who is large and bearded, led Greene to the front of the small crowd. She wore wedges and jeans and a sleeveless black blouse. Like most attendees, many of whom appeared to be in their sixties and seventies, she did not wear a mask for the indoor event. After some boilerplate thank-yous and conciliatory remarks directed at sour Cowan supporters, she brought up her Democratic opponent.
“We got some interesting news today,” she said. “I’m still trying to process it.” Kevin Van Ausdal—who, two days earlier, had touted an internal poll showing him with forty per cent support—had dropped out, citing “family and personal reasons.” Two Democratic officials told me they were completely blindsided. The next day, it was reported that Van Ausdal’s wife had served him divorce papers, and that he had to vacate their home, in Rossville. He had decided to move back in with his parents, in Indiana. Shortly afterward, the deputy secretary of state, Jordan Fuchs, announced that this constituted withdrawal from the race, and that the Democrats would not be allowed to replace him on the ballot. “A lot of people in the district offered to let me stay with them, but that created problems in terms of in-kind contributions,” Van Ausdal told me. He has since taken legal possession of the Rossville house, and moved back in, but his primary residence is now in Indiana. He said that Greene’s divisiveness had given him “a real shot,” and it “hurt my heart a little bit” not to stay in the race. Eason, the vice-chairman of candidate recruitment and membership for the Floyd County Democrats, was crestfallen. “Another mess,” he told me.
“I am very, very happy that now I’m unopposed,” Greene said, at the event in Rome. “And it allows me to take more time to get to know everyone here.” She said that Tom Graves had been advising her, and had been “a great help.” Graves had just announced that he was leaving his post early, in October, saying that his “work will be done” and that it “doesn’t seem right to kill time on the taxpayer dime.” Greene said, “Nothing is changing. Everything is still in place.”
“Could you be appointed by the governor now?” a woman standing close to her asked.
“That would be lovely,” Greene replied. “Why don’t we try to ask Governor Kemp if he can just make that happen?” There was laughter. (Brian Kemp received Graves’s official resignation on October 2nd. As for what he will do now, a spokesperson for Kemp said, “When we have an announcement there, we will let everyone know!” A spokesperson for Graves did not respond to requests for comment.)
Greene closed her remarks by drawing attention to the date: September 11th. “We all know that America changed,” she said, adding, “Our country is so divided, and we shouldn’t be.” The crowd, which was all white save for one young Black man in a MAGA hat, applauded. “And hopefully soon, probably November 4th—hopefully then we can start healing and coming together,” she said. “Then the coronavirus will magically disappear. And all kinds of things. Sunshine and rainbows. That’s what we’ll look for.”
A local Party official named Randy Smith took the stage next. “Folks, for years we have told the minority citizens surrounding us—African-Americans and Mexicans, particularly—we’ve told them that we want them to vote Republican,” he said. “Well, we can’t just tell them. We’ve got to be their friends. They’re citizens, just like you and me.”
I stepped outside, to get some air. A few Greene supporters stood near a Humvee, featured in Greene’s campaign ads, that was furnished with a large American flag and a sign that read “Save America, Stop Socialism!”
“I’ve seen what happens in other countries,” Bill McNaney, a retiree in a Trump hat and MAGA mask, told me. “They absolutely hate the fact that they have to live in that country, but they don’t have much choice.” He mentioned a family he knew who’d come to America from Nicaragua. I asked him about Greene. “Well, she’s a fresh face,” he said. “And she seems to be sincere about what she thinks about the way our country’s gonna go.” He mentioned “this rioting stuff,” saying, of the protesters, “they’re criminals, as far as I’m concerned.” I asked if he thought Greene could do something about riots that were happening outside Georgia. “I hope so,” he said. “If we can get all Republicans in Congress, we’ve got a better chance of making that kind of behavior stop.” He added, “I don’t consider that free speech.”
