A Would-Be Opponent Crashes a Marjorie Taylor Greene Rally

Marcus Flowers, a Black Army veteran who has raised more than a million dollars in his bid to unseat the QAnon-friendly congresswoman in 2022, gets kicked out of Greene and Matt Gaetz’s “America First” tour stop in Georgia.
Marcus FlowersIllustration by João Fazenda

Democrats hoping to represent Georgia’s Fourteenth Congressional District face long odds, which they’ve occasionally lengthened. A former nudist-camp director with a suspended medical license got a D.U.I. during his 2018 campaign and told the arresting officer, “I hate this county.” He lost by fifty-three points. An I.T. specialist dropped out weeks before Election Day last fall. His wife had served him divorce papers. He lost to Marjorie Taylor Greene by forty-nine points.

“We don’t even have a Party chair in Haralson County,” Marcus Flowers said the other day from his house, an hour west of Atlanta. A bearded Black man in his mid-forties, with a scar over one eye, Flowers is an Army veteran and a former military contractor. “A compliance guy,” he said. “Not Blackwater.” He was in his unfinished “basement-gym-office-storage-future-in-law suite,” from which he has raised more than a million dollars in his quest to unseat Greene.

CNN was muted on a big screen. The drywall was covered with Post-it notes bearing the names of prominent Georgia Democrats, as well as words such as “Taxes” and “Israel.” Flowers smoked Marlboros while noting all the ways that Greene has “led good people astray”—from “Jewish space lasers” to election-fraud lies. He showed off his tattoos. “I got this one at Mardi Gras,” he said of a Native American design on his biceps. He wore a big belt buckle, and a black cowboy hat hung on a peg. “My style is a little more West Texas than West Georgia,” he said.

Flowers calls himself moderate. “I might have voted for Bush the first time,” he said. “But I can’t remember.” He met John McCain in 2006 and told him that he’d vote for him if he ever could. “That was before I knew who Obama was,” he added. Flowers’s campaign manager, Chase Goodwin—a veteran of the ill-fated Matt Lieberman Senate campaign—sat staring at his phone. He’d just seen a new tweet from Greene. This one was about “left-wing extremism infiltrating our military,” he reported.

“Laughable,” Flowers replied. “She’s with the January 6th guys.”

They got in Flowers’s truck and drove north to Dalton. It was a “recon mission,” Flowers said. Their target: the third installment of Greene and Congressman Matt Gaetz’s “America First” tour, which had already made its way through Florida and Arizona.

Outside the Dalton Convention Center, Flowers said that, given an opportunity during the rally, he would call for Greene to resign from Congress “for propagating the Big Lie, among other things.” A campaign camera guy and a bodyguard followed as he got in line. Flowers hummed a country tune.

A bearded young man wearing a “Save America, Stop Socialism” T-shirt and a “2A” hat was selling merchandise at a table. He recognized Flowers.

“Marcus!” he said. “Can I get a picture?” Flowers obliged, but not before turning down an “America First” tee.

“You know that was a K.K.K. slogan, right?” he said.

Inside, a few hundred mostly elderly white people milled around. “Tiny Dancer” played. A large blond event-security guy soon approached Flowers at a concession stand. The man wore a shirt—a few sizes too small—emblazoned with the words “Viking Executive Protection.” “I’m asking you to leave,” the security guy said, “because the party of Marjorie Greene recognizes you.” He paused. “Like, we recognize you as somebody that will cause problems here.” He continued, “My job is to assess a threat.”

Flowers, sipping a blue Gatorade, remained relaxed. He wanted to hear his congresswoman speak, he said, and to talk to her if possible. The security guy admitted that he liked Flowers’s style. Then he called the police.

“Y’all are welcome to stand outside,” a cop told Flowers, who tipped his hat and turned to his cameraman. “Congresswoman Greene is apparently afraid to talk to me,” he said. “Yet she chased Congresswoman Cortez down the halls of Congress and screamed at her. All right.”

Back outside, the young man in the 2A hat who’d asked for a photo introduced himself as Brady Day. “I’ve been working for Marjorie for over a year,” he said. Had Day tipped off security? “Yeah,” he said. “I texted the manager.”

“You ratted me out!” Flowers said.

“I have one question for you,” Day said. “What is your stance on abortion?”

Flowers replied that he is pro-choice, then questioned Day about the wisdom of “government-mandated pregnancies.” Day went back to selling merch. The next morning, Day’s Facebook profile picture had been changed to one of him with Flowers standing behind an “I’m Team GREENE” banner.

Flowers, meanwhile, had prepared a new fund-raising e-mail, describing his ejection from the rally. “We all know the real threat to this country is Marjorie Taylor Greene and her fellow-insurrectionists,” it read. “Can you donate $5?” ♦