Clay Fuller, Georgia’s newest congressman, finds his footing
WASHINGTON — During his first week in Congress, U.S. Rep. Clay Fuller passed his first bill on the House floor and had a viral social media moment. He also learned the hardest lesson of them all: Dress shoes were not made for walking the concrete and marble floors of the Capitol Complex every day.
Fuller, R-Lookout Mountain, solved that issue by temporarily wearing running shoes with his suit until the dress sneakers he ordered were delivered to his Airbnb. He could not manage the job with sore feet.
“We’ve hit the ground running,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “When we were talking on the campaign trail, the whole point was to get up here and fight for the hard-working people of Georgia 14. And what we’ve done over the first couple days, we are a warrior for those people.”
The “warrior” ethos has become a driving theme for the newest member of Georgia’s delegation.
Fuller, 45, won last month’s special election in the 14th Congressional District, riding an endorsement from President Donald Trump to the top of a crowded field. Although he and nine other Republicans qualified for the May primary seeking a full two-year term, no one is considered a serious challenge to Fuller winning the party’s nomination. He will face Democrat Shawn Harris in November.
Immediately after his swearing in on April 14, Fuller began casting votes on the House floor. He was assigned to the Small Business and Transportation committees for the remainder of the year.
He is also hiring staff to fill slots left open when aides to former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene got new jobs after her resignation announcement late last year.
Spencer Hogg, a former aide to Georgia Reps. Jody Hice and Tom Graves, will serve as his chief of staff. Jason Murphy, who also worked for Graves but for the past six years has been working for the Georgia House Republican Caucus, is Fuller’s legislative director.
“It’s exciting to have a friend represent Georgia in Congress alongside me,” said U.S. Rep. Brian Jack, now the second-newest member of Georgia’s delegation. “And I’ve been very impressed with the successes he’s already earned.”
Jack, R-Peachtree City, said Fuller won several of his GOP colleagues over with his 1-minute floor speech the day he was sworn in. A Democrat sworn in a week later clocked in at 10 minutes, which some veterans felt was overambitious for a newbie.
Fuller also introduced himself to his new colleagues and worked to get up to speed on legislation.
“The committees on which he serves give him an opportunity to deliver real wins for our state, particularly transportation and infrastructure and given the importance of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport,” Jack said. “So, I’m very excited to see what he will achieve for our state.”
Fuller has already notched his first legislative win. The week after he was sworn in, he introduced a resolution on the House floor: a nonbinding bill expressing support for rural America.
During debate, he spoke about being diagnosed with cancer in 2013 while serving as an officer at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington. In the two weeks he spent in Walter Reed Military Medical Center’s intensive care unit, he and his wife prayed and promised to God that if he was cured, he would leave active duty and follow a calling to public service back home in the Georgia mountains.
That launched him on a career that landed him a fellowship in the White House during Trump’s first term. He served as district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit and now in Congress, which he considers the completion of the full circle.
“That was the promise that I made to Georgia 14,” he said during his remarks on the resolution. “That’s the promise that I made to Appalachia as a whole. And that’s the promise that I made to rural communities that I will be a warrior for them in this body.”
Fuller’s battle with thyroid cancer has also made him curious about the impact of so-called forever chemicals in the water in northwest Georgia because of runoff from nearby carpet manufacturers. He hopes to use his clout and resources as a congressman to dig further into the issue.
“Not to sound too much like ‘A Few Good Men,’ but I want the truth,” he said during a recent interview. “I want to get an understanding of what the facts are. I want to make sure that we’re bringing federal resources to clean this up because everyone in North Georgia deserves clean water and clean land. They deserve their family to be healthy.”
A video he posted on social media during his first weekend in office threatened to undermine his fledgling reputation as a lawmaker to be taken seriously on the Hill.
After a frustrating conversation with a hotel staffer about the air conditioning, a hot and bothered Fuller threw on a ball cap, turned it backward and recorded a rant on his cellphone.
His delivery was straight-faced outrage, and it took days for the masses to understand that it was actually a parody. Fuller had recorded the video in the style of a University of Georgia football fan account, but only a small subset of perpetually online Dawgs stans got the joke.
Others took him at face value as he yelled about the University of Maryland not being good enough to win the SEC despite not being a member school, claimed Venezuela-born Ronald Acuña Jr. as a Georgia native and incorrectly insisted the state was named after George Washington.
Before running for Congress, Fuller was not well known beyond the handful of rural Georgia counties where he served as district attorney and still has a relatively low social media profile. He did not expect the video to take off.
But he also said he doesn’t regret posting it. He was jokingly sending a message, he said. Republicans stand for freedom, which includes the freedom to set your own temperature in your hotel room.
“The joke really went over a lot of people’s heads,” he said. “The right offers common sense. The left offers crazy. And that was kind of the point of the video is to say this isn’t who we are as a country.”
If there was any lesson to be learned about going viral — Fuller’s video has 1.6 million views on X — it’s that, as an elected official, he should use humor more often, he said.
“I think we need politicians who can speak truth and use humor to do it to expose just the false notions that people have about their political leaders, about people who care about them and want to make the country better.”
About the Author
Tia Mitchell is the AJC’s Washington Bureau Chief and a co-host of the "Politically Georgia" podcast. She writes about Georgia’s congressional delegation, campaigns, elections and the impact that decisions made in D.C. have on residents of the Peach State.
