Mr. Harris cited his health and said he would not run in the new election in the Ninth District. Last year, his campaign funded a rogue voter-turnout effort.
Mark Harris, the North Carolina Republican who nearly won a seat in Congress last year but saw his political fortunes collapse after the revelation that his campaign had financed a fraud-tainted voter-turnout effort, said on Tuesday that he would not run in a new election.
In a statement on Tuesday, less than one week after the North Carolina State Board of Elections ordered a new contest for the seat, Mr. Harris attributed his decision to his health and said the Ninth District deserved “to have someone at full strength during the new campaign.”
“It is my hope that in the upcoming primary, a solid conservative leader will emerge to articulate the critical issues that face our nation,” said Mr. Harris, an evangelical pastor from Charlotte.
Mr. Harris’s decision was not especially surprising in the wake of an evidentiary hearing last week in Raleigh, where state officials and witnesses described an absentee ballot effort that was rife with misconduct. Although Mr. Harris denied any personal wrongdoing, he testified that he had hired the contractor at the center of the scandal, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., and he acknowledged that he gave “incorrect” testimony to the state board last Thursday.
[Read: Inside a Fly-by-Night Operation to Harvest Ballots in North Carolina]
At the time, Mr.
