Mark Harris

Mark Harris (born April 24, 1966) is an American pastor and politician from North Carolina.

He is the Republican nominee for the 2024 election in the redrawn NC's 8th congressional district.

Harris was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on April 24, 1966.

He attended local schools there before earning his bachelor's degree in political science from Appalachian State University.

He earned both a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Harris is the lead pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Mooresville, North Carolina.

He has served as the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and as president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

He served as senior of Augusta, Georgia's Curtis Baptist Church from January 1, 2000 to July 2005.

Harris ran for the United States Senate in the 2014 election, finishing in third place in the Republican primary behind Thom Tillis and Greg Brannon.

Harris previously ran to represent NC's 9th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

In 2016, he was defeated in the Republican primary by incumbent Robert Pittenger.

He later ran against incumbent congressman Robert Pittenger for the U.S. House in 2016.

The election went to a recount, with Pittenger certified the winner by 134 votes.

This time, Harris defeated Pittenger in the Republican primary (which featured a higher turnout than the 2016 primary).

According to The Washington Post, Harris directed the hiring of Dowless for his campaign even though Harris received personal warnings in 2016 that Dowless had almost certainly used questionable tactics to deliver absentee votes in rural Bladen county for Todd Johnson, another losing candidate in the District's Republican congressional 2016 primary.

While the allegations of irregularities were being investigated, Harris sought to have himself certified as the winner of the election.

Harris resigned from the First Baptist Church in 2017 and ran again for the U.S. House in 2018.

Harris ran for Congress again in 2018, defeating Pittenger in the Republican primary.

In the general election against Democratic opponent Dan McCready, initial tallies appeared to show Harris winning the election but an election panel declined to certify these results after allegations of harvesting involving McCrae Dowless, a Republican political operative employed by the Harris campaign.

Dowless was later criminally charged in connection with the alleged fraud, but Harris was not.

After the November 6, 2018 general election, Harris was 905 votes ahead of his Democratic competitor, Dan McCready, after county election boards certified the election; however, the North Carolina Board of Elections voted 9–0 on November 27 to delay the election to investigate fraud allegations.

Following an investigation, the Board ordered that a new election be held.

Harris was not a candidate in the new election.

Following the November 6, 2018, midterm elections in North Carolina's 9th congressional district, initial tallies put Harris 905 votes ahead of his Democratic competitor, Dan McCready.

McCready conceded on the day after the election, but the state Democratic Party filed affidavits with the state's board of voters claiming that the Harris campaign had used independent contractors to collect unsealed absentee ballots from voters and alter them before submitting them to the post office.

The North Carolina Board of Elections voted 9–0 on November 27 not to certify the election.

The Board of Elections subsequently opened an investigation which centered around the activities of Leslie McCrae Dowless, who had felony convictions for perjury and fraud.

Dowless had been employed by numerous campaigns of Republican candidates to orchestrate "get out the vote" efforts.

The accusation is that Dowless, who was hired by the Harris campaign, paid workers to illegally collect absentee ballots from voters.

In February 2019, the bipartisan North Carolina Board of Elections dismissed the results of the election and called for a new election to be held.

Harris was not a candidate in the new election, which was won by fellow Republican Dan Bishop.

In January 2019, Harris filed a petition to have a court certify him as the winner of the election; Harris's petition was rejected that same month.

That same month, Harris said "no evidence has been supplied that suggests the outcome of the race is in question"; The News & Observer disputed Harris's assertion, stating that it was "extremely unlikely" that Harris knew "the extent of evidence that has been submitted to the NC elections board".

On February 9, 2019, Harris said that "Democrats and liberal media have spared no expense disparaging" his good name and blamed "a liberal activist" on the Board of Elections for controversy surrounding the election.

He described the alleged ballot-harvesting scheme as "unsubstantiated slandering".

During the investigation, the North Carolina Republican Party declared, "Mark Harris won the election", calling on the state elections board to certify Harris as the winner.

The party also defended Harris, describing him as an "innocent victim".

The outcome of the election remained uncertified while state election officials investigated the alleged fraud.

In early January, Republican party officials refused to send Democratic governor Roy Cooper the names of their party's candidates to fill vacancies on the board.

Responding to their actions, Cooper said, "If politicians and the people they hire are manipulating the system to steal elections, all of us should pull together to get to the bottom of it and stop it — regardless of whether the candidate who finished ahead in a tainted election is a Republican or a Democrat".