Is That Gun Smoking?

Nate Silver is "coming in hot" (as Jesse Presnell just said on Facebook) on the absentee ballot scandal in the NC-9. Silver posted on Twitter this morning: "We're changing our rating on this race to Lean Prison."

Pastor Harris

Nate Silver was referencing new reporting by Joe Bruno that (again) links Rev. Mark Harris directly, personally, to suspected fraudster Leslie McCrae Dowless, reporting that 2017 Charlotte City Council candidate Pete Givens said he was personally introduced to Dowless by his pastor, Mark Harris: "Mark told me about this guy's process ... that he had a process." So Givens apparently hired Dowless to help him out in last year's Charlotte City Council race, paid him $800 in "consulting" fees, but Givens lost. "The Dowless process" maybe depends on a more rural landscape to work properly.

Harris's direct involvement with Dowless was first suggested way back three days ago in the Charlotte Observer -- an article I completely missed even though Billy Ball referred to it and reprinted it at the Progressive Pulse, and I should have noticed.

I believe that when the activity of McCrae Dowless first surfaced in the news, the Harris campaign wanted to imply that they had nothing to do with his hiring, that it was campaign consultants at the Red Dome Group that hired him. Perhaps so, but Harris knew him and recommended him and gave $400,000+ to the Red Dome Group to marshall their troops for the fight. Those troops included Dowlass, and Mark Harris was bound to know.

The Reverend is staying very quiet about all of this. If he's issued any public statement, I haven't seen it, and can't find it. Though I've searched. His Twitter feed contains nothing in the way of comment, though he did tweet on November 30 that "there is absolutely no public evidence that there are enough ballots in question to affect the outcome of this race," a position he's incidentally very wrong about. He's never mentioned Dowless nor the scandal that has erupted, though he's ever more central to it.

Dallas Woodhouse.
Photo Harry Lynch News and Observer

Subpoenas have begun to fly, one of them issued by the SBOE to the Mark Harris campaign. Also one to the Red Dome Group. The SBOE so far hasn't subpoenaed the NCGOP, but they should because Dallas Woodhouse at the NCGOP also hired Red Dome with "state money" that can't be legally spent on federal campaigns, so shouldn't we know if any of that NCGOP money went to subsidize "the Dowless process"? Especially as Dallas Woodhouse has a history of bragging about laundering money through his party treasurer.