Mark Harris suddenly calls for a new election in the 9th District, leaves hearing
RALEIGH
Republican Mark Harris, in a stunning reversal, called for a new election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, giving up hopes of being certified as the winner in a race marked by voting irregularities in Bladen and Robeson counties.
“I believe a new election should be called,” Harris said in testimony before the state elections board, citing evidence he had heard over the first three days of the hearing in Raleigh. “It’s become clear to me the public’s confidence in the 9th district seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted.“
Harris said he suffered two strokes while hospitalized for a severe infection.
“Though I thought I was ready to undergo the rigors of this hearing and am getting stronger, clearly I am not and I struggled this morning with both recall and confusion,” Harris said. “Neither I nor any of the leadership in my campaign were aware of or condone the improper activities that have been testified to.”
Harris then left the witness stand and the hearing room. As he walked away from reporters, his wife Beth put her arm around his back and rubbed it. They disappeared down the hallway in the NC State Bar building.
Previously, Harris had maintained he was unaware of any absentee ballot fraud and insinuated there was a plot to deny him a seat in Congress. At a recent meeting of the NC GOP executive committee, Harris said, “The Democrats and liberal media have spared no expense disparaging my good name” and called the allegations “unsubstantiated slandering,” according to a video of that meeting posted online.
Harris took the stand Thursday morning, one day after testimony from his son, John Harris, a federal prosecutor in Raleigh. Harris testified and emails showed that he warned his father about hiring Bladen County operative McCrae Dowless to run a mail-in absentee ballot program during the 2018 campaign.
A member of North Carolina’s State Board of Elections pressed Harris on why he didn’t heed warnings from his son.
RECORDS TURNED OVER
Elections officials announced the campaign had just turned over more than 800 pages of documents Wednesday night, long after the deadline. Harris attorney John Branch took responsibility for the late arrival. But Marc Elias, attorney for McCready, expressed surprise about emails and other documents that had “miraculously appeared.”
“I feel frankly that a game of three-card Monte is going on,” he told the board.
Harris described meeting Dowless through the intercession of a mutual friend, former judge Marion Warren. Harris knew that Dowless had helped Todd Johnson win almost all absentee votes in the 2016 GOP congressional primary. 
In a 2017 email to Warren, one of the documents turned over Wednesday night, Harris said he wanted to meet “the guy whose absentee ballot project for Johnson could have put me in the US House this term had I known and had he been helping us.”