'The lady with three names': Marjorie Taylor Greene receives warm reception at Cobb GOP as Dems take aim

Jan. 9—Cobb GOP Chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs got a call late Friday.

"And (the caller) said, 'I really want to come meet my constituents in Cobb County and be sure that they hear from me and know who I am and understand what we're going to do in Cobb County in the area I now have,'" Grubbs recalled.

So, Saturday morning, controversial U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, made a surprise appearance in Marietta before members of the Cobb GOP, who welcomed her with raucous applause.

She spoke of President Joe Biden's "fraudulent electoral college votes," suggested the FBI was a key participant in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and likened masking children to protect them from the coronavirus to "child abuse."

Two of Greene's constituents abhor this rhetoric. But they were in Smyrna Saturday, at the Cobb Democratic Committee's meeting at the Smyrna Community Center. Among the candidates to give stump speeches were two Democrats who are challenging Greene in this year's election: Holly McCormack, a small business owner specializing in retirement planning and life insurance, who lives in Ringgold with her husband and two teenagers; and Wendy Davis, who lives in Rome and served two terms on the Rome City Commission.

The villain in the Harry Potter series is referred to as "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," and there was a bit of this at the Democratic Committee's Saturday meeting.

When state Rep. David Wilkerson, D-Powder Springs, introduced Davis, whom he has endorsed, he did not refer to Greene by name, instead saying: "I was not excited about getting that other person in our district, who does not have any committees, but I am excited about Wendy Davis."

Davis followed suit, referring to Greene as "the woman whose name we're going to try to say very rarely, right? I don't have to belabor the fact that she's dreadful and awful and bad for America and dangerous to our democracy and dangerous to our health, because you all know that."

When Davis opened it up for questions, even a member of the audience referred to Greene as "the lady with three names."

Her incendiary, headline-making comments aside, Cobb Republicans and Democrats alike have had little reason to think about Greene since she took office at the beginning of 2021. That recently changed.

During once-in-a-decade redrawing of political maps this past fall, state lawmakers added to Greene's rural, conservative district the southwestern corner of Cobb, an area that overwhelmingly votes for Democrats and whose residents are majority-minority. Democrats there were outraged they had been added to a district with which they have little in common and would be represented by a politician that had become synonymous with the Republican Party's rightmost fringe.

Both Davis and McCormack maintain that Greene does not represent the values of the people of northwest Georgia.

"I know that it's probably not been an exciting change of events for you guys in Cobb, but we are very glad to have the help," McCormack said, referring to the part of Cobb that is now in Greene's 14th Congressional District. "There are a lot of people up where I'm from that are sick to death of how we're represented. There is not one person I've ever met in Georgia who treats people the way she does. We're hard-working people who are good to each other, have great values. And that's the representation we need. We've been in the news not for our good people or our beautiful district, but for hate and rhetoric and divisiveness, and this isn't who we are, so that is why I entered."

Greene's statements have cost her committee assignments in the House of Representatives and, most recently, her own personal Twitter account. The social media platform banned her last month for repeated violation of a policy that prohibits the spread of false information about the coronavirus and vaccines.

Greene addressed her Twitter banishment Saturday. She called it "the most communist platform" and said she welcomed expulsion from a website that allows posts from members of the Taliban and the Chinese Community Party.

Greene denounced the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, in part because it "disrupted and ruined" the attempt by far-right members of Congress to object to the counting of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College votes.

And she attacked an investigation of the riot by House Democrats "and two sorry Republicans," U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, as attempts to "dirty up Republicans" in an attempt to hold the House.

When the new district maps were unveiled, Kerwin Swint, director of the School of Government and International Affairs at Kennesaw State University, told the MDJ he did not believe adding the southwest Cobb precincts to Greene's district changes the outcome that much.

"Marjorie Taylor Greene should easily win reelection," he predicted at the time.

Davis acknowledged the uphill battle Democrats have in their effort to oust Greene.

"And I will tell you that if it were just a random empty suit Republican that we were facing, it would be an insurmountable climb," Davis said. "But she opens the door for us every single day. She really does."

Davis said there was initially not a great reaction from Republicans when Greene took office.

"And now they're more than just a little bit more than embarrassed. They're angry at what she is making their party look like."

Davis said she doesn't take joy in Greene making the Republican party a mess, yet Greene picks a fight everywhere she goes.

"Lately she's been picking fights with Republicans. A lot of people think the reason that you all were added to this district is she went down doing what my mom would call 'showing her tail' at the legislature, telling those Republican leaders what they weren't going to do to her. They made her district less Republican. They made this district less white. We have an opportunity and Cobb County, you all are the key to it very much so."

McCormack said she's launched the biggest voter registration campaign northwest Georgia has ever seen, modeled after what Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight have been doing.

"This is going to lift all boats. So from school board and city council all the way up to Stacey Abrams, this is important work," she said.

Without counting the new part of the district in Cobb, McCormack said her team has identified "over 12,000 unregistered likely Dems" in the district. Over the past week, her team has mailed thousands of targeted voter registration packets and launched a field program to chase down those people, making sure they received the packet and get it back to her.

"That's how we're going to change the numbers to unseat Marge," McCormack said.

— MDJ editor Jon Gillooly contributed to this report.