Preacherman Bows Down to the Golden Calf

 

Rev. Mark Harris, one of NC's newest crop of Congressional idolators and the week-old bread who's been elected/unelected/reelected in different districts, trailed by vote-stealing evidence that cost him the seat in 2018 and embarrassed his Christian piety. As pastor of a Southern Baptist megachurch in Charlotte and a leader of the evangelistic campaign to punish LGBTQ people for being LGBTQ, it should come as no surprise that Harris would introduce H. Res. 59, "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the sermon given by the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde at the National Prayer Service on January 21st, 2025, at the National Cathedral was a display of political activism."

There's apparently a live rumor in MAGA-land that Bishop Budde is some kind of dangerous lesbian. For evidence there's the haircut. Plus she speaks up particularly for the LGBTQ community, which in church is a damning admission of something dark and sinful. But Budde and her husband, Paul, have two adult sons and are also grandparents. (So shut the fuck up. All of you.)

For the record, Budde said a fact to Trump's face, which in Trumpland is obviously verboten and actually punishable by death. Budde said the truth, that LGBTQ and other minorities are actually scared of Trump because of the ExecOrders he's already signed, and they fear for the future and for their actual lives. Gosh. That's now a "political" thing to say? Pointing out the connection between Jethro's decrees and the real suffering in the civilian world because of him? 

Preacherman's resolution is culture war flotsam. Just noting here that there ain't no bigot like a supposedly religious one.

The Five New Republican Congressmen From NC

 

The NCGOP is calling them "the Fab Five of 2025" (if you can imagine Tim Moore as "fab" in any universe). Their sudden fulmination as freshmen owed everything to the powers of gerrymandering. For the record, here's a brief primer on who they are:

Pat Harrigan

Addison McDowell (NC-06) -- I made fun of him in the primary. (Also here.) He had no Democratic challenger in the General.

Mark Harris (NC-08) -- I made fun of him and covered extensively the election re-do in NC-09 his campaign caused in 2018. Too many individual posts to link. Use the Search button, top left.

Pat Harrigan (NC-10) -- Harrigan was interesting to me because of his initial willingness to criticize Tim Moore, going back to Nov. 2023, and challenge him in a primary for the newly created 14th CD, a district drawn expressly as an appropriate landing pad for Moore who had grown bored with Speaker of the NC House and needed more capacious real estate on which to deal and Capitol Hill would do just fine. Moore had a magic wand with the map-makers, and the new 14th would be a breeze. Then Pat Harrigan arrived out of nowhere. Early in November, with the candidate filling period looming the first week in December, Harrigan, an ex Green Beret who manufactures guns, bared his teeth at Moore: "Harrigan put a hard finger right on the bruise: Moore's corruption, including the domestic corruption of the marriage vows, was a matter of character. Harrigan out-and-out suggested that Moore has none" (JWW). Harrigan was right, incidentally.

Harrigan's righteous anger at public corruption was refreshing, coming from a Republican candidate in the Age of Trump. Maybe he's a standup guy with a sense of ethics, I mused. But then he looked like just an opportunist when he completely abandoned his interest in the 14th CD and switched over to file in the 10th CD minutes after Patrick McHenry announced his retirement. Harrigan beat an anointed business-type Republican in the primary.

Brad Knott (NC-13) -- A blank slate for me. I'll be watching.

Tim Moore (NC-14) -- The pudge who became an improbable sex avatar and who appears to be a giant sponge when it comes to free or loose money, offered by free or loose men. Too many posts to make choices. Use the Search engine at top of page.  

 

Some Primary Results -- US Congressional Races

 

Pat Harrigan

US House Dist. 1 -- Republican Laurie Buckhout beat husband-beater Sandy Smith

US House Dist. 5 -- Republican incumbent Virginia Foxx beat challenger Ryan Mayberry, taking almost 68% of the vote district-wide. But almost a third of Watauga County voted for Mayberry

US House Dist. 6 -- Republican runoff coming between top vote-getter Addison McDowell, who took 26% of the vote, vs. former congressman Mark Walker, who took 24%. Bo Hines placed 4th. May be the end of his political ambitions

US House Dist. 8 -- Republican preacherman Mark Harris, the center of the 2018 ballot-harvesting scandal, won 30% against 5 other candidates and thus avoids a runoff

US House Dist. 10 -- Republican firearms manufacturer Pat Harrigan won outright over establishment pick Grey Mills (endorsed by Virginia Foxx and Tim Moore and many other big names) and 3 other candidates, taking over 41% of the vote

US House Dist. 14 -- Republican NC House Speaker Tim Moore easily won his primary in a district that was drawn especially for him

The Shadow You Cast These Days If You're in a Republican Primary

The Republican primary for the 8th Congressional District features 6 candidates, the most well funded of whom is John Bradford, currently in the NCHouse (Dist. 98), and the notorious Reverend Mark Harris of ballot fraud fame that happened in 2018 in CD9. Harris has evidently gotten over the tears of that embarrassment and is bouncing back into the political spotlight as a pretty dern self-righteous dick. So John Bradford, who's had an image in the General Assembly as a kind of Fred MacMurray suburban dad willing to get along, apparently thought he needed to up the testosterone level to compete with hell fire, so he produced this very sad, out of character 30 seconds and is putting it on TV:

Grateful to Paige Masten for alerting us to this.

This Preacher Gives Preachers a Bad Name

 

You've heard, right? Rev. Mark Harris is attempting a political resurrection from the grave he put himself in during the elections of 2018. 

You remember. 

Harris, pastor of a Southern Baptist megachurch in Charlotte and a leader of the 2012 evangelistic push to punish LGBTQ people for being LGBTQ, had beaten incumbent Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger in the 2018 primary, then ran against Democratic Marine golden boy Dan McCready (not all bright visions come to pass). Harris appeared to win over McCready by 900 votes. That's when the world got to know Leslie McCrae Dowless, a character out of the novel about NC politics that Damon Runyon never wrote.

By the end of November 2018, Joe Bruno, a reporter for WSOC, first mentioned the name Leslie McCrae ("McCrae") Dowless, and began to find a history of allegations of ballot fraud going back years. McRae Dowless, a gun for hire, a Democrat when they had power and then officially a Republican after they took over. An opportunist with certain skills, which turned out to be outright forgery and fabrication of bogus absentee ballots (which -- let's be fair -- may never actually have come close to turning an election but nevertheless tainted the one sufficiently in 2018 to end Mark Harris's political career, at least until now). Dowless faced criminal charges. Somehow, Harris skated. The Wake County D.A. said there wasn't enough evidence. But the State Board of Elections (SBOE) refused to certify Harris's election based on provable fraud, and then voted unanimously (including the two Republican members) to invalidate the 2018 election and call for a new election in 2019 (which Dan McCready lost again, this time to that horse's patoot Dan Bishop). All of which culminated in an escalation of revelation, first his denial that he knew anything about Dowless's activities (hardly credible that this preacherman didn't perceive exactly who McCrae Dowless was). But from denial, he was soon sobbing in public at the SBOE inquest while his son testified against him, said he himself had warned his father about the apparent corruption of Dowless. Harris ended his testimony abruptly, withdrawing his candidacy and conceding that a new election was called for, considering the evidence.

That was 2018. Now, in yet another election year, Harris is back as a striving Christian warrior trying to save America -- or at least the 8th District of NC -- and denying that any of 2018 ever happened. He now says he was the victim of a manufactured ballot crisis, that Democratic officials conspired against him to "steal" his election. Is the Trump shtick of God's own martyred hero going to suffice for Harris's comeback? Dunno. Time will tell. Someday soon I might get around to profiling Harris's primary opponents, and how they're treating him.

Tim Funk published a revealing profile on The Assembly's website about Harris's current plan to make his comeback in March's primary against several other Republican contenders. Well worth signing up for The Assembly. 

Mark Harris, Going Full Trumpist

 

Tuesday was a busy news day in North Carolina. Kyle Ingram reported:

Mark Harris, whose 2018 congressional campaign was at the center of a ballot-harvesting scandal ending in a new election and felony indictments for an operative who worked for him, announced his campaign for Congress on Tuesday. 

Harris’s own son gave bombshell testimony at 2019 state hearings called to investigate election fraud, where Harris himself called for a new election. 

Yet in his campaign announcement, Harris cast doubt on the decision to reverse his apparent win. “After seeing first hand the manufactured scandal that resulted in the Democrat controlled State Board of Elections not certifying our victory in 2018, I am one of the few people who truly understands the extremes Democrats will go to in order to advance their woke, leftist agenda,” he said in a statement.

Hilarious.

It's now Republican boilerplate, partially rewritten to fit Rev. Harris: Not only does election fraud thrive (even in races that Republicans win), but an investigation by the State Board of Elections never happened and if it did, it was totally the product of the other Party's invention.

Harris says he's running in NC8, the seat currently help by Dan Bishop, who plans to abandon it to run for Attorney General. But the boundaries of NC8 will probably change when the Republicans get around to gerrymandering themselves into perpetual power, which will happen as late in the fall as possible, to give Democrats little time to recruit candidates in new House and Senate districts.

Will Mark Harris have a miraculous resurrection? He believes so apparently. He wouldn't be saying "woke" otherwise. He's got the correct hymnal in his hands.

Oh Dear Lord

 

“I believe God may be calling me to help the country during this important time. In calling our previous donors, I am finding overwhelming encouragement.” 

--Rev. Mark Harris

To recap: The Reverend ran successfully in 2018 for the 9th CD, beat the Republican incumbent Robert Pittenger in the primary and then beat Democrat Dan McCready in the general election, but had it all thrown out because of absentee ballot fraud allegedly perpetrated by a Mark Harris campaign hiree, McCrae Dowless (now deceased and never convicted). Harris was photographed sobbing as his son testified against him at the State Board of Elections hearing, after which a new election was ordered (the special election that Dan Bishop ended up winning).

That Rev. Mark Harris (who's currently a senior pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Mooresville). He told Dallas Woodhouse at Carolina Journal that "God may be calling me," and I appreciate the modesty of the conditional "may be," but I've known a lot of Baptist preachers in my life and forbearance ain't generally in their skill-set. Besides, in the very next sentence, he brings up "previous donors" and their "overwhelming encouragement," and may be those potential dollars speak louder than any Still Small Voice. 

Plus there's always waaay too much stuff that needs saving to hold back the immodesty. So Harris tells Woodhouse that he may run for what is now the 8th CD, and I expect he will. That's the seat that the aforementioned Dan Bishop is giving up to run for our Attorney General. When the Republicans send their candidates, they don't always send their best.

Who Got the NCGA Office That Rep. Ray Russell Was Evicted From?

That would be Rep. Jake Johnson, the newest (and now youngest) member of the NC House, appointed at the end of July to finish out the term of Rep. Cody Henson (previously the youngest member). Henson resigned his seat after admitting in court to cyber-stalking his estranged wife.

Jake Johnson is a pet of the Republican establishment, and we can see why. He's a rare bird, a talented millenial who's all in for the conservative brand. Johnson checks all the boxes: acidly pro-life, pugnaciously pro-NRA, and piously pro-family.

He's also politically accomplished: Ran for county commish of Polk County at the age of 19, lost but came back in two years to run again and win (highest vote-getter among commish candidates). It wasn't long before his fellow commissioners voted him chairman of the board, making him officially in Republican circles A Force To Be Reckoned With. He was the obvious choice to replace the other conservative millenial, the out of control Cody Henson, in the NC House -- that cow palace on Jones Street in Raleigh where the newest Republican wunderkind was going to need an office, which -- turned out -- was just coincidentally already occupied by Rep. Ray Russell, who also just coincidentally needed punishment for being a too uppity freshman legislator.

Jake Johnson claimed that he went to college (the year after he lost that first race for co commish) to get a degree in business administration but that Barack Obama in the White House was the straw that broke his business back. He switched to political science out of revenge for Obama and became an avowed partisan warrior against what America was becoming under a president who might have been -- probably was -- born in Kenya. I found on-line where he was scheduled to speak to the Asheville Tea Party back last January on the "steps we are going to have to take to get younger people into conservative politics." (I wish I'd heard that rap!)

Here's the passage in Johnson's biography that's almost forgotten: He says he served as "field director" for the successful congressional campaign of Mark Harris. That would be the Reverend Mark Harris, whose winning campaign against Democrat Dan McCready in November of 2018 was called back to be redone because of massive ballot fraud committed -- wait for it -- in the field operation.

Question: Did Jake Johnson know McCrae Dowless? Did he as Field Director know what McCrae Dowless was up to? And does his experience on the Mark Harris campaign still deserve prominent mention in his resume?

US DOJ Convenes Federal Grand Jury To Look Into NC-9 Ballot Fraud

If this is Robert Higdon's investigation, there's no explicit word about that in early news reports. The grand jury has been empaneled by the US Department of Justice in DC, but they're subpoenaing all the major players including McCrae Dowless, the Mark Harris campaign, and the NC State Board of Investigations.

UPDATE

Robert J. Higdon Jr.

Subpoenas are coming from the Public Integrity Section of the US Department of Justice. The federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Robert Higdon, remains silent and inactive on the matter of Republican ballot stealing. The Washington Post includes these paragraphs:

State election officials first referred evidence of ballot fraud in the 9th District to the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina in January 2017, nearly two years before allegations roiled Harris’s race against Democrat Dan McCready last fall. Frustrated state investigators said that they saw little evidence that prosecutors were pursuing the case.

A spokesman for the office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the subpoenas were sought by the Justice Department in Washington and not the U.S. attorney in Raleigh, Robert J. Higdon Jr.

Complicating matters is the fact that one of Harris’s sons, John, is an assistant U.S. attorney in Higdon’s office.

John Harris did the right thing in testifying honestly about his warnings to his father about McCrae Dowless. John Harris's boss Robert Higdon doesn't appear interested in justice or the rule of law in this case.

Boss Hogg Will Have Competition in the NC-9 Republican Primary

We've already taken notice of "Boss Hogg" Stony Rushing, who's says he's running in the NC-9 congressional special election and who's been endorsed for the seat by Mark Harris, the man who ran last year and supposedly won but who may now be running from the Wake County District Attorney.

Boss Hogg will obviously provide the comedy for the special election. Who will supply the credibility?

Tommy Tucker

Maybe Wyatt Thomas "Tommy" Tucker Sr., a former state senator (first elected in the Tea Party Year of 2010 and who stepped down rather than run again last year). At his retirement he was co-chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. (Republican Todd Johnson -- who has also been implicated in the McCrae Dowless investigation -- won his open seat easily last November.)

Tucker is infamous for a 2013 confrontation with a newspaper publisher, at the time the Berger/Moore super-majorities in the General Assembly were really getting their conservative juggernaut underway and were feeling visibly arrogant about their power. In a committee hearing over a bill that would seriously hurt small-town newspapers, the publisher of the Goldsboro News-Argus challenged Tucker's interpretation of a voice vote in the committee. The publisher believed the vote had failed and wanted a show of hands. Tucker refused and declared, “I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.”

Apparently, Tucker had a habit of regularly shushing public opposition in similar fashion. His voting record is textbook conservative: He voted for repeal of the Racial Justice Act and even voted to ban the use of statistical evidence that would show racial bias in cases where the death penalty was chosen.

Tucker was a big opponent of same sex marriage, voting for the ban in the state constitution, and after the Supreme Court stepped in and declared such measures unconstitutional, he voted for SB 2 in February 2015, which would allow state officials to refuse to perform marriages on “religious grounds.” He supported HB 819, which banned climatologists and other scientists from monitoring sea level change along North Carolina’s coastline. Et cetera.

Ridenhour with his family

Or maybe Matthew Ridenhour, who was a Mecklenburg County commissioner until he was defeated last November in the complete Democratic sweep of all county commission seats. He was a North Carolina delegate for Marco Rubio to the 2016 Republican National Convention. Interesting, as was this: After his defeat last November, at his final meeting on the Mecklenburg Commission, Ridenhour decried the partisanship, especially from national politicians, that is “rotting us to our core." He seemed to be indirectly referencing Donald J. Trump.

Ridenhour is an urban Republican, a little more moderate, a little more house-broke than his rural rivals. You won't catch Ridenhour in a Boss Hogg outfit. Ridenhour, like Democratic front-runner Dan McCready, is a former Marine and had evidently earned the respect of both Democrats and Republicans while he was on the Mecklenburg Commission. According to Politico, he's considered "a rising star in the local GOP" (popular among the far right of his party especially because he pushed for concealed carry rights in Charlotte parks).

Ridenhour has not completely decided to run, but he says he could win if he did, especially with the Charlotte part of NC-9 behind him.

There will probably be other Republicans jumping into this primary, including some currently serving members of the General Assembly. The schedule for the special election, including the filing period for candidates, will be set by the State Board of Elections on Monday. Whoever decides to run, and whoever eventually wins that primary, will likely be facing this man who already has good name recognition and a big financial advantage.

Dan McCready

McGruff, The Crime-Fighting Dog, Is Lying on the Porch

Robert ("Bobby") Higdon

Leslie McCrae Dowless was indicted and arrested yesterday in the ballot fraud case in the NC-9. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman is bringing the charges.

Meanwhile, where is the US Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, who ought to take an interest in blatant fraud employed to corrupt a federal election?

Robert Higdon Jr., the federal prosecutor for eastern North Carolina, does not appear to be investigating the 9th District case. Higdon has instead prosecuted cases of noncitizen voting, producing minimal penalties. President Trump and other Republicans have portrayed noncitizen voting as a widespread phenomenon, although there is little evidence to support their claim.

Why would Trump's man in the prosecutor's office want to look into actual election crimes that benefitted a Republican when there are so many suspicious-looking brown people he can single out?

NOTE: Rev. Mark Harris's son John, whose testimony last week completely sunk the Harris campaign's boat, actually works as an assistant attorney in Higdon's office. And Rev. Harris himself is not out of D.A. Freeman's line of fire:

More charges are likely, Freeman said. She said her office’s “very large-scope” investigation will examine “who was aware of and helped finance these fraudulent absentee ballot activities” — a sign of potential legal peril for Harris, who hired Dowless. She also plans to determine whether anyone else besides Dowless allegedly tried to obstruct either the criminal or state board investigations.

Preacherman Harris Won't Run Again in NC-9; This Is the Candidate He Wants in His Place

"Boss Hogg," a.k.a. Stony Rushing

Boss Hogg! No, really. Union County commissioner Stony Rushing thinks dressing up as a notoriously stupid and corrupt county commissioner in the fictional world of "The Dukes of Hazzard" earns him votes.  Apparently so, because he's been reelected more than once in Union County. He's now decided he wants to go to Congress. Reverend Mark Harris, ruined by the balloting fraud uncovered in the 9th District, sez he wants this guy too. He's endorsed him.

"Most elected officials would spurn the comparison to Boss Hogg, especially those eyeing a seat in Congress. But not this local politician and gun range owner, who dressed as the grifter for Halloween last year, on the eve of the November election that would solidify his local following and set him up to seek higher office" (Isaac Stanley-Becker).

"He embraces the comparison to the unscrupulous television character .... He has even campaigned on it, plastering his Facebook page with photographs of himself in the classic Hogg get-up, gun in one hand, cigar in the other."

Rushing says the ballot fraud that scuttled Mark Harris was “blown out of proportion." In keeping with the character pictured above, he blames Democrats for everything. “Dan McCready and his Establishment Friends Just Threw ALL of Our Ballots in the Trash!” he protested on Facebook, sharing an image with an American flag. “What are We going to do about IT?”

As I was finding out about Mr. Rushing, the news flashed that Dowless McCrae has been arrested. That arrest frames Mr. Rushing's impersonation of a corrupt county commissioner. It'll be up to the voters of the 9th District to decide if, denied their sanctified preacherman, they want a buffoon as their representative in Congress.

He may not make it to the special election, as he's almost guaranteed to have one or more primary opponents who don't emulate idiots (though they may play one in private).

Dan McCready Now the Favorite To Win the NC-9 Special Election

Not going to attempt to summarize the explosive final day yesterday in the hearing into the certification of the NC-9, but suffice it to say that Republican Mark Harris's argument that he should be declared the winner collapsed in the wake of his son's testimony. When Harris's lawyers discovered on Wednesday that the State Board of Elections investigators were in possession of emails proving that Mark Harris has been lying about McCrea Dowless for months -- emails that those lawyers had withheld in the discovery process -- they suddenly coughed up another 800 pages Wednesday night of "discovery" that they had somehow not discovered when they should have discovered them.

Any hoo...

Nobody expects preacherman Mark Harris to run for the seat in the special election. So everyone is speculating which Republicans might run in a primary (probably in May) and who will come out on top for an October special election.

We know which Democrat will run. Reportedly, Dan McCready has already raised a half-mil (full disclosure: I contributed to McCready last night), and he might even be considered the favorite to win that special election.

Radioactive

Rev. Mark Harris, reacting to his son's testimony
yesterday in Raleigh, during the hearing
on whether the election in NC-9 should be
certified 

RALEIGH 

-- Contradicting his father’s previous denials, the son of Republican Mark Harris testified Wednesday that he told the candidate multiple times that he had concerns about the political operative hired to run an absentee ballot campaign in Bladen County. 

The testimony from John Harris rebutted suggestions by Harris and his campaign that they’d seen no red flags about McCrae Dowless, who is now at the center of allegations into voting irregularities in the 9th Congressional District.

John Harris’ dramatic testimony came on the third day of a hearing by North Carolina’s State Board of Elections that could decide the nation’s last unresolved congressional race and has drawn national attention — and it left his father in tears.

“I love my dad and I love my mom,” John Harris said as his father cried. “I certainly have no vendetta against them, no family scores to settle, OK? I think they made mistakes in this process, and they certainly did things differently than I would have done them.”

His parents did not know he was going to testify....

[Bryan Murphy, et al., News and Observer]

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article226492265.html#storylink=cp[y

Some Highlights From Yesterday's Hearing

In the hearing into the contested congressional race in the NC-9, the focus fell heavily on Leslie McCrae Dowless, the man Reverend Mark Harris insisted be hired by his political consulting firm, Red Dome, to deliver the absentee vote for him. Deliver Dowlass did.

Grateful to ProgressNC for bulleting these key points:

Dowless employee Lisa Britt went into extensive detail about the mechanics of McCrae Dowless’s vote theft operation, describing how she filled out incomplete absentee ballots in support of Republicans, falsified witness signatures, and gave unsealed ballots to Dowless -- all of which is illegal. 

Britt also provided evidence that Dowless committed obstruction of justice and witness-tampering by asking Britt and other potential witnesses to falsely claim Dowless did nothing wrong. 

Britt testified that Dowless went to great lengths to knowingly conceal his illegal vote theft scheme by delivering ballots in small batches, mailing them from post offices near voters’ addresses, having witnesses falsely use the same date as the voter signed and using different ink colors for signatures. 

Britt also testified that Dowless encouraged her to commit voter fraud by voting despite being on probation for a felony. 

State Elections Director Kim Strach described evidence of a "coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme" as well as a coordinated attempt to tamper with witnesses by Dowless and potentially others. 

Strach said Dowless was paid over $130,000 by the Harris campaign and its consultant Red Dome. Britt testified that she heard Dowless and Red Dome founder Andy Yates discussing vote totals, indicating that Red Dome was aware of Dowless’s illegal tactics.
Strach said Yates has so far refused to speak with investigators, and that criminal investigations into the apparent vote theft scheme will continue after the hearing.

By the close of the hearing yesterday, it had become clear that Dowless, who was in the room all day, is refusing to testify without a grant of immunity, and his colorful attorney, Cynthia Adams Singletary, played Rudy Guiliani for the cameras, talking way too much in a way that didn't seem to help her client. Cameras like a talker.

The hearing continues this morning (in a few actual minutes). When it ends -- Gawd knows when -- the board will "vote to either certify the victory of Republican Mark Harris, call for a new election, or deadlock, which would throw the matter into limbo" (Brian Murphy et al.).

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article226263575.html#storylink=cpy

What We've Learned So Far in the NC-9 Election Fraud Hearing

Explosive stuff. Here's the best summary from WSOC reporter Joe Bruno's Twitter feed.

Hottest Ticket in Raleigh

The newly appointed five-member State Board of Elections has announced a hearing on the certification of the NC-9 Congressional election for Monday, February 18, at the North Carolina State Bar (217 East Edenton St., Raleigh). The SBOE is apparently expecting a lengthy hearing, because it has reserved the room through the 20th.

To repeat: It will take three votes to certify the election of Rev. Mark Harris and four votes to call for a new election.

On February 7 -- Thursday of this week -- members of the SBOE will be getting an in-person debriefing on what the staff's investigation into the NC-9 election has turned up, and they'll reportedly be making appointments to county boards of election.

Reverend Harris Trying End-Run Around the State Board of Elections

Rev. Mark Harris's lawsuit to get himself declared the winner of the NC-9 congressional seat is right now being heard by Judge Matthew Ridgeway in Wake Superior Court. You can watch live here.

UPDATE
Judge Ridgeway denied Mark Harris's request for certification of his election. Harris will have to wait until a new State Board of Elections is empaneled on January 31st, which will presumably schedule a hearing date for the investigators to present their evidence of what happened in the 9th Congressional District.

New Development in the NC-9 Congressional Seat

The previously scheduled January 11th State Board of Elections (SBOE) hearing into ballot fraud in the 9th Congressional District election is now off. There is currently no empaneled SBOE. Governor Cooper's plan to appoint an interim board to hear the evidence in the NC-9 case has been thwarted by the NC GOP, which refuses to recommend Republican members to that temporary board. (A new, fully functioning board is not scheduled to be appointed by the governor until January 31. You can thank the Republican-dominated General Assembly for that.)

Speculation abounds as to what happens now. Republican Rev. Mark Harris is trying to get a Wake County Superior Court judge to go ahead and certify his election. Harris also finally agreed to a sit-down interview with SBOE investigators, which is happening today in Raleigh. Meanwhile, the rest of Congress is being sworn in today, minus Harris. My understanding is that the US House has the power to determine who will be seated but does not have the power to order a new election.

So we wait? Until January 31st? Presumably, a new SBOE will finally schedule that hearing, presumably for sometime in February. It's beginning to look a lot like we'll be deep into 2019 before we get some closure on this chapter in our state's history.

What's Happening Right Now in Raleigh: "Game of Groans"

You know how many transformations the state Board of Elections (SBOE) has gone through since the Republicans seized power, each change either an attempt to seize more power or an attempt to lessen the sting of a negative court decision. Same for local county boards, currently at an impasse with 2 Dems and 2 Rs.

The most recent new legislation will take all boards of election back to majorities "of the party of the governor," with 5 members on both the SBOE and all county boards (majority of 3 Dems on each).

The problem has been down in the 9th Congressional District, where the putative election of Reverend Mark Harris has not been certified because of an investigation into ballot fraud. In the meantime the previous composition of the SBOE, which is holding Harris's certification, was supposed to expire weeks ago -- the 4 Dems, 4 Rs, 1 Unaffiliated iteration (with both Stella Anderson and Four Eggers of Watauga County representing the major parties). The 3-judge panel which ruled the current iteration unconstitutional had extended the life of the board twice, to give it time to rule in the Harris case.

Apparently, late this week, the 3-judge panel ran out of patience and refused to extend its stay for the dissolution of the 4-4-1 SBOE. The staff at the SBOE yesterday (a little after 3 pm) sent out this announcement:

Today at noon the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement ceased to exist after the three-judge panel in Cooper IV refused to extend the stay. The parties to the lawsuit had unanimously requested that the court extend the stay to allow the Board to conclude its investigation into irregularities affecting the 9th Congressional District.

Effective January 31, Session Law 2018-146 establishes a five-member State Board of Elections and eight-member Ethics Commission. Once appointed, County boards of elections will be made up of five members.

The governor and legislature appear to disagree on what happens to the board in the meantime. It is our view that the agencies go back to the way they were in 2016, prior to the legal changes that were struck down. This means the governor could appoint five board members from lists provided by the parties. These board members would serve until January 31. [emphasis added]

What this means is that for the moment county boards of elections do not have appointed members and therefore may not meet or conduct business.

We understand that Governor Cooper intends to appoint a 5-member SBOE on Monday that will conclude the Reverend Harris circus and that he has invited the two parties to make nominations immediately. We understand that Dallas Woodhouse and his GOP gang are claiming the governor has no such power (didn't Berger/Moore take all his power away, and if they missed this little piece, it was merely an oversight). So the Republicans might sue, and they might lose. We expect they will.

FOOTNOTE: The ballot fraud investigation in the NC-9 has become ever more Byzantine, and I gave up a long time ago summarizing every new piece of news about it. The SBOE hearing on the case is scheduled for January 11th, and I may be there to witness it. I suspect a lot of other people will be there too.

FOOTNOTE: The Rev. Mark Harris campaign yesterday filed in Wake Superior Court an emergency petition to certify his election. That won't work, as the courts can't take that power from the body endowed with it, and the Democrats in the US House have no intention whatsoever to seat Harris until the investigation into fraud is complete.