Republican Candidate Suddenly Drops Out Of House Race

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Voting in the midterm elections may be in the rearview mirror, but they’re still — quite literally — being litigated. As North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District prepares for a redo of the election there this past November, Republican contender Mark Harris — who’d been thinly ahead in the eventually delegitimized final vote counts — has announced he won’t be running again.

He explained:

‘Given my health situation, the need to regain full strength, and the timing of this surgery the last week of March, I have decided not to file in the new election for Congressional District 9. It is my hope that in the upcoming primary, a solid conservative leader will emerge to articulate the critical issues that face our nation.’

Although he cited health concerns as his reason for bowing out, but he’s also stepping aside under the cloud of scandal associated with Leslie McCrae Dowless, who led what’s believed to have been a ballot tampering effort as part of his work with the Harris campaign.

Just last week, testimony before the state election board revealed that Harris had ignored a warning from his own son about Dowless’s questionable at-best history when bringing him on board. Harris dramatically turned his position around and said last week that he supported a new election, which had been floated as an option for some time. The date for the new election, which will include a primary, has yet to be set. Dowless said in his explanation of stepping aside that he supports local county commissioner Stony Rushing. Democrat Dan McCready, who Harris originally bested by just over 900 votes, will by all appearances also be running again.

Dowless corrupted the original election with an operation that included gathering absentee ballots from voters in rural areas, despite the fact that the practice is illegal. Concern about a potential “simple” mistake isn’t where the issue ends, though — looking at vote totals in the area, it has long strongly appeared likely that Dowless’s team destroyed ballots that weren’t in support of Harris. He garnered a portion of local support that is completely inconsistent with trends — he’d have had to capture not just all the Republicans, but a portion of other-party voters as well.

Dowless is facing serious investigations. Just in recent days, local media reported that the State Bureau of Investigation and the Wake County District Attorney’s Office have issued a total of at least three search warrants targeting the disgraced political operative’s financial and phone records. He has unsurprisingly denied wrongdoing.

Ironically, Republicans have long sounded an alarm about supposed “voter fraud” so you’d think that they’d jump on-board with the idea of getting to the bottom of the election fraud that transpired last fall in North Carolina — however, save for a sparse collection of instances like Harris suddenly calling for a new election last week, they have not.

That hasn’t stopped the Republican nonsense train though. President Donald Trump just recently claimed without any evidence whatsoever that investigators had discovered “a million fraudulent votes” in California.

In other words, whoever wins the 9th Congressional District’s next U.S. Rep. spot will have a lot to deal with whenever they get to D.C.

Featured Image via YouTube screenshot