N.C. congressional candidate sought out aide, despite warnings over tactics
Source: Washington Post
North Carolina congressional candidate Mark Harris (R) directed the hiring of a campaign aide now at the center of an election-fraud investigation, according to three individuals familiar with the campaign, despite warnings that the operative may have used questionable tactics to deliver votes.
Harris sought out the operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, after losing a 2016 election in which Dowless had helped one of Harris’s opponents win an overwhelming share of the mail-in vote in a key county.
State and local investigators say that whether Harris knew that his campaign may have engaged in improper tactics has become a focus of the expanding probes into whether election irregularities affected the 9th District election, in which Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes.
That question is also roiling the state Republican Party, whose leaders had rallied around Harris, a 52-year-old evangelical pastor from the suburbs of Charlotte. Party leaders are now backing away from Harris and trying to limit the fallout of a scandal that has delayed certification of the last undecided federal contest of the 2018 election cycle.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nc-congressional-candidate-sought-out-aide-despite-warnings-of-voting-irregularities/2018/12/13/daea8338-fca1-11e8-83c0-b06139e540e5_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bf8256059f89
= new reply since forum marked as read
From the first time I saw him this week on a cable TV clip, I was saying he looked like a conman/preacher but until your post I didn't know he actually is one. 
Getty/Popular Info
L: Republican candidate Mark Harris and Donald Trump, R: Leslie McCrae Dowless
Leslie McCrae Dowless is a political operative and former convicted felon at the heart of a voter fraud investigation in North Carolina’s Bladen County, WSOC-TV reports.
Bladen County is at the center of a fraud investigation by the North Carolina Board of Elections into the results of the 9th US House District election in which Republican Mark Harris defeated Democrat Dan McCready by less than 1,000 votes. The elections board declined to certify the results and are investigating irregularities in Bladen County.
Harris received a suspiciously high number of absentee votes in the county even though he lost the absentee vote in every other county in the district. Dowless, an operative in the county, was paid by Harris through a payment to his firm, Red Dome, WSOC-TV reported.
Here’s what you need to know:
Dowless has an extensive criminal history, Popular.info reports.
In 1990, he forged the signature of an employee at his auto sales business who died in a car accident on a life insurance policy, the outlet reported. He backdated the form and named himself the beneficiary. He received a check for $163,541. He pleaded guilty to felony fraud in 1992.
More:
https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/leslie-mccrae-dowless/
I hadn't seen it yet. It's concise and I like that!
