North Carolina state Sen. Dan Bishop, who authored the much-derided "bathroom bill," is the GOP's front-runner in the state's do-over election. | Chuck Burton/AP Photo elections Election scandal, 'bathroom bill' shadow GOP in North Carolina redo primary The top two candidates for the GOP nomination in the do-over election have links to recent Republican controversies in the state.

The two most explosive recent episodes in North Carolina politics — involving bathrooms and alleged election fraud — will reemerge Tuesday in a high-profile congressional race that Democrats are targeting to pad their House majority.

The top GOP candidate in the contest is state Sen. Dan Bishop, author of the state's much-derided "bathroom bill," which was widely seen as discriminatory against transgender people and triggered a fierce backlash nationally. The No. 2 candidate in polls, Stony Rushing, is the hand-picked choice of Mark Harris, whose apparent victory over Democrat Dan McCready last fall in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District was tossed out after credible claims of illegal ballot collection. A new election was ordered, and Republicans are set to pick their candidate Tuesday in the first round of voting.


The GOP hopes the redo will end an embarrassment that’s added to the party's woes as it plans to host President Donald Trump's 2020 convention and keep the state's 15 electoral votes in the Republican column. But with polls showing Bishop and Rushing leading the 10-candidate field, the election fraud scandal and HB2 — the "bathroom bill" that led to the defeat of the state's then-GOP governor in 2016 — continue to hover over the party.

Still, Republicans say they’re confident they can hang on to the House seat. And many see Bishop as their best bet, since polls suggest he's the only candidate with a chance to win the nomination outright by clearing 30 percent of the vote.

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If no candidate reaches that threshold, the second-place candidate can request a runoff. If the nomination is decided on Tuesday, the general election will be on September 10. But if a runoff is needed, it would be on that date, with the general election on November 5.

"Every day we don't have a Republican nominee advantages McCready, because it advantages him financially to raise national money online while Republicans slug it out amongst themselves,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) “So the faster we can get a nominee, the better it is for Republicans."

The seat has sat vacant since former Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger's term ended at the close of the last Congress. A year ago, Harris ousted Pittenger to win the GOP nomination in the first place, vaulting a conservative pastor into a battleground House race against a highly touted Democratic recruit. And it's been a little more than seven months since Harris appeared to edge McCready by fewer than a thousand votes out of nearly 283,000 cast.

But the state declined to certify the results, and a redo was ordered in February after officials found evidence of election fraud earlier this year. Harris declined to run in the do-over race — and since then Republicans have debated which kind of candidate would be the best to take on McCready, a Marine veteran who has mostly embraced moderate policy positions.

In Bishop, Republicans have a conservative Trump loyalist with a long, and at times controversial, voting record. Bishop is leading the pack in polls, with Rushing — who was endorsed by Harris and is perhaps best known for dressing up as Boss Hogg, the corrupt politician on "The Dukes of Hazzard" — in second place.

If Bishop and Rushing run first and second, Bishop will be the party's nominee even if he falls short of the 30-percent threshold. Rushing has said that should he take second place on Tuesday he will not request a second election.

“We’re optimistic about [Bishop's] prospect of avoiding a runoff,” said Bishop strategist Jim Blaine.

Blaine brushed aside any concern that Bishop's voting record would hamstring him against McCready. Despite the close election result in 2018, Trump carried the seat by 11 percentage points in 2016.

“In the general election we believe the race is going to be a referendum on Trump, and Dan Bishop is going to stand with Trump," Blaine said.

Other GOP strategists agreed that the “best option” for Republicans if they want to maintain control of the district is to avoid a runoff, but some argued that Bishop wasn’t the best candidate. At a time when Republicans say they want to boost female candidates over male ones in open primaries, real estate agent Leigh Brown is seen as potentially more effective in a face-off with McCready. But national Republicans have refrained from weighing in, even as they’ve started to get behind candidates who are running for the House in 2020.

Brown’s been heavily backed by the realtors' national political arm, which has spent $1.3 million on advertising to boost her campaign. But polls of the race, which show Bishop hovering right around the 30-percent threshold, don't suggest Brown is gaining much traction.

Chris Sinclair, Brown’s strategist, said there some 20,000 realtors in the district and their votes could have a notable impact on the outcome. But Brown has faced aggressive attacks from the conservative Club for Growth, which is backing Bishop, through ads and a website calling her a liberal who opposed Trump’s tax overhaul bill.

When it endorsed Bishop last month, the Club specifically cited his ability to win the nomination outright in Tuesday's primary. "Republicans can’t afford a four-month runoff that will drain resources needed to defeat ... McCready, while allowing McCready to focus on November," former Rep. David McIntosh (R-Ind.), the Club's president, said at the time.

A runoff wouldn't just give McCready an extended financial head start, Republicans warn. It would also schedule the general election on the same day as municipal elections in Mecklenburg County, home to the city of Charlotte — and many of the Democratic voters in the district, who would have an added incentive to come out to the polls.

McCready is running unopposed in Tuesday's Democratic primary, which allows him to continue presenting himself as an independent voice in the Democratic Party that puts “country over party.” He's also been stockpiling cash for the general election: As of April 24, McCready had nearly $1.6 million in cash on hand.

If Bishop ends up winning the GOP nomination, McCready’s campaign plans to draw a sharp contrast with the Republican, who has a long voting record in the state legislature. The primary area of attack will center on Bishop’s health care voting record rather than the bathroom bill, which was partially repealed in 2017.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meanwhile, will continue aiding McCready largely behind the scenes with field infrastructure and voter outreach — but doesn't plan an aggressive TV push unless warranted closer to the general election.