Morning Digest: State board orders redo in North Carolina House race tainted by GOP campaign's fraud
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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar. LeadMorning Digest: State board orders redo in North Carolina House race tainted by GOP campaign's fraud
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar. Leading Off ● NC-09: On Thursday, after four days of hearings into charges that Republican Mark Harris benefitted from an illegal absentee ballot scheme in last year’s race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, the bipartisan state Board of Elections unanimously voted to hold a new election. This will be the first time a re-vote has occurred in a House race since 1974, when a malfunctioning voting machine was enough to cast doubt on Republican Henson Moore’s 44-vote win in a contest in Louisiana; Moore decisively won the do-over the following year. Campaign Action Democrat Dan McCready, a businessman and retired Marine, has long been preparing to compete here again, and there’s no question his fellow Democrats will give him the chance to try once more. There’s far more uncertainty, however, on the GOP side. Last year, the Republican-led state legislature passed a law mandating new primaries whenever a new election is ordered in a congressional contest. That’s a change from prior practice, which would have required only a new general election be held between the existing nominees—something that would have left the GOP stuck with Harris. On Thursday, McCready’s attorney, Marc Elias, declined to say if he’d challenge this new law in court. If there’s a new Republican primary, Harris is likely to face plenty of opposition if he runs again. That’s a big if, though: Harris, who said at Thursday’s hearing that he’d suffered two strokes in January and was “struggling” to make it through his testimony as a witness, has not yet said what he’ll do, though after the board’s vote, his wife said «we will think about» another bid. It will be up to the board, rather than Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, to schedule this new race. However, it’s possible that the new election for the 9th District will be held the same day as the pending special election for the 3rd District, which became open after GOP Rep. Walter Jones died last week. Since Cooper is tasked with scheduling the 3rd District vote, he may end up having a say in when voters in the 9th District will go to the polls if the board chooses to follow his lead. The board’s vote to hold a new election capped off a dramatic week of proceedings that were nothing but a disaster for Harris. On Wednesday, his own son, federal prosecutor John Harris, testified that he'd warned his father about McCrae Dowless, the operative accused of masterminding the illegal absentee ballot harvesting operation on behalf of Harris’ campaign. Read more