After Harris admissions, a new election in 9th District

Harris also apologized for testimony he gave on damning emails that his legal team failed to provide the board ahead of this week's hearing on the race. They were disclosed only after Harris' son John was set to testify about them Wednesday, something Harris' legal team tried to explain away as an error in a massive discovery process.

Mark Harris' lead attorney stopped the board's proceedings in the middle of his client's testimony Thursday, and after closed-door meetings, Harris came back with a statement. It had been "brought to my attention," he said, that he told his other son, Matthew, Tuesday night that those emails wouldn't be part of the hearing.

Mark Harris' son on Bladen absentee ballot operation: I thought it was illegal, and I was right

State Board of Elections General Counsel Josh Lawson had asked Harris repeatedly before the break whether he'd had such a conversation, and Harris said each time he couldn't remember one.

Matthew Harris, Mark Harris' attorney said, was the one who revealed to his father that John Harris would testify in the case. That conversation took place Tuesday at about 11 p.m.

It was John Harris' testimony that broke the case open by disclosing that he repeatedly warned his father against hiring Bladen County operative McCrae Dowless to do absentee ballot work for his congressional campaign in Bladen, Robeson and Cumberland counties.

Mark Harris, who was in the hospital in recent weeks with what he has previously described as a serious infection, said Thursday that he'd also had two strokes in recent weeks.

"Though I thought I was ready to undergo the rigors of this hearing and am getting strong, I am clearly not, and I struggled this morning with both recall and confusion," he told the board in a prepared statement.

He went on to reiterate that neither he nor his campaign leadership knew about the "the improper activities that have been testified to in this hearing." But he said it was obvious from that testimony a new election should be called.

The board has heard since Monday from several people that Dowless ran crews door to door picking up absentee ballots, which is a felony.

"It has become clear to me that the public's confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted," Mark Harris said in his statement.

With that, he and his wife left the hearing room as reporters scrambled to spread the news. The hearing continued, though it was clear the bipartisan board would vote to hold a new election. For the next half hour, microphones in the meeting room squealed with feedback – interference from live television broadcasts emanating from the lobby outside.

The board's vote was unanimous and also called for new elections in an unresolved Bladen County commissioner race and a Soil and Water Conservation District race in the county. A new primary and general election will be held in the 9th District, with dates to be decided later by the elections board.

There's also the matter of a criminal investigation: Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman has said she expects to follow up on the State Board's inquiry, and that no one who testified during this week's hearing has immunity.

Mark Harris, a Republican who seemed to win the first go-round by 905 votes, didn't say whether he'd run again when a new election is set. Democrat Dan McCready, who has pushed for a new election almost since the board declined to certify the first one in late November, couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.

Key witness won't testify in 9th District hearing, while others detail scheme to collect absentee ballots

Before his announcement, Harris had repeatedly testified that he didn't consider his son's warnings about Dowless to be a warning at all, only "concerns" expressed in "family conversation."

Democratic board member Jeff Carmon was incredulous, calling John Harris' emails "beyond a red flag."

"It was painfully clear to me that your son was saying, 'Daddy don't mess with this guy,'" Carmon said. "That was your son, with no ax to grind, who wanted to make sure you were protected."

Mark Harris replied that his son, an attorney at the time, was only 27, had never been to Bladen County and never met Dowless, whom his father trusted on the word of several local politicians.

"Obviously, I read these emails today in a very different intellectual light," he said. "But I'm his dad, and I know he's a little judgmental and has a little taste of arrogance."

McCready's lead attorney, Marc Elias, said the emails were "explosively important," and before Harris' announcement, he had planned to call more witnesses to probe whether the Harris campaign failed to turn over other key evidence.

"I feel like, frankly, there is a game of three-card monte going on," Elias said.

It was nearly lost in the shock of Harris' announcement, but the board also heard new evidence Thursday that suggested early voting results may have been leaked in the 9th District race. That has been alleged for months, but state elections director Kim Strach said at the outset of the hearing on Monday that her investigation couldn't prove the vote totals were given early to either campaign.

There is a text message, though, from Mark Harris' wife, Beth, to John Harris on the Sunday before the 2018 Republican primary. In that message, Beth Harris runs through some get-out-the-vote plans ahead of the Tuesday primary.

"We had some GOTV in Cumberland via McCrae but not as successful," she wrote. "He says we have 988 of the votes in Bladen."

Bladen County's early vote count was run early in both in the primary and general elections last year, though there was conflicting testimony this week about who saw those results. Mark Harris' actual early vote count in the primary – including both in-person early voting and the mail-in absentee ballots – was 889.

Thursday also saw Mark Harris testify that he was surprised to hear Dowless was paid more than $100,000 for his role in the campaign, more than any other campaign contractor. Harris had previously told state investigators he thought it was more like $60,000 to $70,000, most of which was a pass-through to workers running Dowless' operation.

9th District consultant: Now I don't know what to believe

It was clear in the hearing that the board wanted to determine where all that money went and how much was used to finance the illegal collection of absentee ballots, particularly from Bladen County voters. The Harris campaign's lead consultant, Andy Yates, testified earlier in the week that he never got records from Dowless to back up reimbursement requests.

Harris said he had assumed Yates was handling that, though he himself brought Dowless onto the campaign before Yates was hired.

"I did not know that it was just simply word of mouth," he said.

After the hearing, board member Stella Anderson, a Democrat, said the state will probably never know the full extent of ballot issues in the now-defunct race.

"The number of different things we cannot know with certainty ... just seems to be the nature of the beast," Anderson said. "The nature of the wrongdoing has been very difficult to come to terms with."

David Black, one of Anderson's Republican colleagues on the board, said he hadn't made up his mind before Harris' announcement whether to call a new election or not. Republican officials in the state had insisted that Dowless' operation never touched enough votes to swing Harris' margin of victory.

"But it was pretty evident," Black said after the hearing, "that something was going on wrong and illegal in Bladen County, and some of it seemed to by systemic. ... And McCrae Dowless was part of the system."