A right-wing pastor whose congressional ambitions crashed and burned after a person paid by his campaign was found to have committed ballot fraud is now claiming his election was "stolen" from him.
The Assembly reports that Mark Harris, who last year announced he was once again going to run for Congress in North Carolina's 8th congressional district, now says Democrats "stole" the election from him in 2019, just like they supposedly did to former President Donald Trump, who legitimately lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden in both the popular vote and the electoral college.
But as The Assembly documents, it was Harris himself who called for a new election in North Carolina after evidence emerged that a Republican operative had engaged in ballot fraud on his behalf.
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What's more, the seat was not won by a Democrat in the new election, but by Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), who is running for North Carolina state attorney general next year.
Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College, tells The Assembly that Harris' rhetoric is a clear attempt to rally Trump's base to his side by parroting bogus stolen election claims.
"What the former president is focused on is the politics of grievance," he explained. "So it may be a helpful alignment [for Harris] to say ‘Trump had an election stolen from him and I can relate to that. … I will fight on his behalf because of that experience.’”
