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There were all kinds of congressional primaries on Super Tuesday, but one of the more unexpected contests was in North Carolina’s 8th district, and an Axios report summarized the apparent outcome.
Here’s a wild comeback: North Carolina Republican Mark Harris, who was at the center of an election fraud scandal over the 2018 midterms, has won the GOP nomination for the state’s 8th Congressional District, AP projects. ... Harris, a Baptist preacher, will be a favorite in November against Democrat Justin Dues in a safe Republican district where nearly 60% of voters supported Trump in 2020.
Before we dig in in earnest, it’s important to note that while the Associated Press has called the GOP primary for Harris, NBC News shows Harris ahead, but it hasn’t yet called the race.
That said, if the AP is correct, this outcome would’ve been difficult to imagine in the not-too-distant past.
For those who might benefit from a refresher, let’s revisit our coverage from several years ago and review how we arrived at this point.
The day after the 2018 midterm elections, it appeared as if Harris, a former far-right pastor, had narrowly prevailed over Democrat Dan McCready in a competitive North Carolina congressional race.
It wasn’t long, however, before a problem emerged: There was evidence that widespread election fraud had tainted those election results. In fact, an NBC News report from the time highlighted the findings of state investigators, who “described a ‘coordinated, unlawful’ mail-in ballot ‘scheme’ in Bladen County,” run by political operative McCrae Dowless in support of the GOP candidate.
Dowless, of course, had been hired by Harris, though the candidate denied any involvement in the scheme.
As evidence mounted, the Republican candidate ultimately acknowledged that the results of the election were unreliable, and he agreed that there needed to be a do-over election. The North Carolina Board of Elections came to the same conclusion and ordered another race.
(Do-over elections in the United States were, and are, extraordinarily unusual, and a do-over election stemming from fraud allegations was practically unheard of. The Washington Post went digging, looking for a comparable set of circumstances, and the best it could do was an obscure congressional special election in Kentucky in 1827.)
Harris decided not to run in the do-over election. Dowless, meanwhile, was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted.
It was tempting to think the Republican candidate would quietly fade into obscurity, but he nevertheless launched a comeback bid last year, characterizing the 2018 mess as a “manufactured scandal” that ended with the State Board of Elections “not certifying our victory in 2018.”
Remember, six years ago, Harris himself agreed that the race had been so tainted by fraud that the election had to be redone.
Evidently, the GOP candidate hoped that memories were short, and as things stand, his optimism was warranted: Harris is all but certain to make it to Capitol Hill, thanks to the partisan makeup of his district.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.