Republican John Cowan won the GOP runoff in Georgia’s 11th Congressional District, defeating Rob Adkerson and setting up a November matchup with Democratic nominee Chris Harden for the open northwest Georgia seat.
Cowan, a Rome-based neurosurgeon and business owner, beat Adkerson, a former top aide to retiring Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, after neither candidate cleared the 50% threshold in the May primary, Atlanta News First reported. Unofficial runoff results showed Cowan above 65% and leading Adkerson by roughly 30 points, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s election results page.
The win puts Cowan in a commanding position heading into the general election. The 11th District, which includes suburban and exurban communities northwest of Atlanta, has long been friendlier terrain for Republicans, and the Cook Political Report rates the race Solid Republican with an R+12 partisan voting index.
Harden, an attorney from Cherokee County, won the Democratic primary and will try to flip a seat that has been in Republican hands under Loudermilk since 2015. But the Democratic path is steep in a district Loudermilk carried by a wide margin in 2024 and where the Republican nominee will enter the fall as the clear favorite.
Loudermilk’s retirement transformed what could have been a routine reelection into one of Georgia’s most competitive Republican House primaries. The outgoing congressman announced earlier this year he would not seek another term, saying he wanted to spend more time with family.
Cowan’s victory caps a bruising intraparty contest between a self-funded physician outsider and a candidate tied closely to Loudermilk’s political network. The fall campaign now turns to whether Harden can make the race competitive in a district where Republicans start with a built-in advantage.
