John Harris, who testified against his father in election fraud case, will run for office in NC

Three years after testifying against his father in an election fraud case that captivated the country, Wake County attorney John Harris will announce a run for North Carolina’s state House.

That testimony came after Harris’ father, Mark Harris, ran for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in 2018. Over his son’s objections, Mark Harris hired political operative McCrae Dowless to run an absentee ballot campaign for that race.

The elder Harris, a Republican, won that race thanks mostly to questionable absentee ballots, leading the state elections board to block the election’s certification and launch an investigation. Over the course of that investigation, Mark Harris maintained that no one had raised red flags about Dowless.

Contrary to his father’s claims, John Harris testified in a February 2019 hearing that he had warned his father about Dowless and the legality of his operation.

John Harris, a Republican from Apex, is ready to move past all that. The former assistant U.S. attorney will announce his candidacy for a seat in the legislature Tuesday, he told The News & Observer.

“I’m really focused on the future, and not the past,” Harris said in an interview with The N&O. “And that’s what I want my candidacy to be about.”

State and national liberal groups are challenging North Carolina’s political maps in an ongoing lawsuit, but if the maps are not redrawn as a result of those challenges, Harris will run in House District 36 in southern Wake County against the district’s incumbent, Democrat Rep. Julie von Haefen.

Harris may want to move past the events of 2019, but his decision to testify against his father in 2019 could make him more appealing to Wake County’s suburban voters, which have elected both Democrats and Republicans in recent years.

If he wins, Republicans will be well-positioned to win a supermajority in North Carolina’s General Assembly in November — giving the party enough votes to override vetoes by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

“He’s kind of beyond the political, and his actions a couple of years ago showed that,” said Republican political operative and former Wake GOP chairman Charles Hellwig. “He’s just a guy who said, ‘I gotta do the right thing.’”

Harris, who now works at Smith Anderson, has already had some experience in the legislature. While he was in college at UNC-Chapel Hill, he worked for former state Sen. Richard Stevens, who also works at Smith Anderson.

Role in 9th district election fraud scandal

Harris’ testimony was one of the reasons that his father’s election was overturned.

For the most part, he cut off communication with his parents following the election, but just one day before their son took the stand, Mark and Beth Harris learned he would testify, according to a newly released book centered around the scandal, “The Vote Collectors.”

On Feb. 20, 2019, John Harris said at the hearing that he told his father multiple times, including in emails, that he had concerns about Dowless.

He initially raised those concerns after the 2016 primary election, when his father ran in the 9th Congressional District for the first time.

Now-state Sen. Todd Johnson, who had the lowest overall vote total, received 221 mail-in absentee votes in Bladen County in that race, compared to just four for Harris. The winner of that election, incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger, received just one, The News & Observer reported.

““This smacks of something gone awry,” John Harris wrote in an email to his parents in June 2016.

He raised concerns again the following year, after his father met with Dowless for the first time.

“The key thing that I am fairly certain they do that is illegal is that they collect the completed absentee ballots and mail them all at once, “ he wrote in an email to his parents in April 2017. “The way they pop up in batches at the board of elections makes me believe that.”

Relationship with Mark Harris

Harris consulted Stevens, whose office was located next to his at Smith Anderson at the time, about his concerns about Dowless and about his testimony, Stevens said.

“He said, ‘Richard, I’ve got to do the right thing. I’ve got to tell the truth,’” Stevens said. “And he did.”

Still, Harris testified that he believed Dowless lied to his parents repeatedly and that, if his father had known Dowless was illegally collecting ballots, he wouldn’t have continued to work with him.

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

Harris, a dad of three, said he sees his parents often now and that they have a good relationship.

“Our relationship absolutely transcends politics,” Harris said.

Harris said he believes voters won’t ultimately make their decision based on his decision to testify, however.

“The 2018, 2019 events, that’s always going to be part of my story,” Harris said. “But I’m not running because of 2018, 2019, I’m running because of 2022, and really I’m running because of 2042 and the kind of world I want to see, and the vision I have for North Carolina and thriving families and the ways we can accomplish that.”

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.

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