New election in NC. Anti-LGBTQ pastor will not be seated in Congress

Mark Harris

Meanwhile, in the non-Jussie Smollett world, i.e. the real world,  anti-LGBTQ pastor,  Mark Harris, who Karen Pence campaigned for in a successful election to Congress, will not be seated just yet after all. The North Carolina state board of elections voted unanimously to hold a new election. This took place a day after explosive testimony from Harris's own son in which he told of warning his father not to hire the shady character who ended up being the center of this scandal of what appears to be severe absentee ballot fraud.

From Right Wing Watch:

North Carolina’s state board of elections has spent the week hearing testimony in an investigation of suspected absentee ballot fraud that prevented the board from certifying what had appeared to be a narrow 2018 election victory for Religious Right candidate Mark Harris in North Carolina’s ninth congressional district. Late on Thursday the board voted to hold a new election to fill the seat. 

One dramatic high point of the hearings came on Wednesday, when Harris’s son John testified that he had warned his father against hiring the campaign operative at the center of the fraud allegations. Another came on Thursday, when Harris eventually reversed his previous efforts to be seated in Congress and said he believed a new election should be held. WBTV’s Nick Ochsner live-tweeted the proceedings. 

Harris is a pastor and a Religious Right favorite who was supported by Karen Pence, “historian” David Barton, Christian nationalist David Lane, and Trump-promoting “prophet” Lance Wallnau, among others. 

John Harris testified that he had repeatedly warned his parents that Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless was a “shady character.” When Mark Harris took the stand on Thursday, and was asked how to reconcile his son’s testimony with his previous public statements that no one warned him about Dowless, Harris said “I did not believe John’s emails to be a warning.” Responded one board member, “It’s painfully clear your son meant, ‘Daddy, don’t mess with this guy.’”

Harris has a long history of anti-LGBTQ actions and rhetoric.

According to Pink News:

The Republican candidate also campaigned to abolish LGBT+ rights protections in North Carolina during the state’s battle over its bathroom ban, saying: “They can call it a new morality. They can call it the new normal, but God has said it’s same old sin, and I’m going to stand on the… word of the living God.”

Also:

In August, Media Matters unearthed video of Harris bemoaning, “We have watched in one generation where homosexuality was once criminalized to now we see the criminalization of Christianity.” 

Media Matters has also reported on Harris’s Islamophobia, including his signing of a statement that falsely claimed that “all terror groups … have 100% Muslim membership” and asserted that “terrorist entities are not aberrations of Islam, they are the very essence of it.” 

“We need good men like Mark Harris in Congress to keep the country moving ahead,” said Pence. 

Just before she spoke at the rally, Pence did a brief interview with anti-LGBTQ personality Elizabeth Johnston—aka Activist Mommy. Johnston asked if “the pro-life issue” was a motivating factor for Pence to campaign for Harris. “Absolutely,” said Pence, saying that she and her husband told their children the first time he ran for Congress the told their children, “We’re running to save the babies.” 

Johnston followed up with her own declaration to the camera, saying, “I am here today because Mark Harris looked me in the eye, and he assured me that he wanted to see an end to the bloodshed, an end to the murder of babies through abortion, and he said, ‘No exceptions.’ And I said, ‘That is a man I can get behind.’

I wonder if Karen Pence will campaign for Harris again.