In late 2018 and early 2019, Mark Harris was an almost-congressman from North Carolina.
Harris had walked away from pastoring his Charlotte megachurch to pursue a dream of serving in the U.S. House. He knocked off an incumbent in the GOP primary, and then appeared to beat his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, by 905 votes out of more than 275,000 cast.
Harris even showed up on Capitol Hill soon after the election to attend House freshman orientation, get an office assignment, and pick out paint colors.
But back in North Carolina, there was “a huge scandal brewing,” in the words of TV talk show host Stephen Colbert, riffing on what soon became national news: The N.C. Board of Elections refused to certify the results in Harris’ race because it was investigating absentee-ballot fraud.
Political operative McCrae Dowless of Bladen County, who was paid $131,375 by the Harris campaign, allegedly orchestrated the collecting, tampering, and forging of ballots.
On February 21, 2019, the silver-haired Harris, wearing a dark suit and an American flag lapel pin, took the witness stand in Raleigh on day four of the state board’s evidentiary hearing.
He denied any knowledge of the illegal doings by Dowless, a convicted felon whom Harris had personally hired despite warnings from Harris’ own son. John Harris, an assistant U.S. attorney, had previously offered dramatic testimony about cautioning his father.
As Mark Harris was being questioned, his attorney stopped the proceedings. After taking a break to meet with his lawyers, Harris, still speaking under oath, read a statement: “Through the testimony I’ve listened to in the last three days … it’s become clear to me that the public’s confidence in the 9th district seat [in the] general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted.”…
In his nearly five-minute announcement video, Harris charges that Democrats stole the election from him—like they did, he said, to former President Donald Trump. And just as Trump is complaining that the U.S. Department of Justice is being used by the Biden administration to go after him, Harris is pointing to the refusal of the state elections board to certify his victory.
“I was sort of the tip of the spear, in 2018,” Harris said in an interview. “You have the North Carolina Board of Elections that was deciding [it] was going to step in in a way that had the appearance of the weaponization of a government agency.”