THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

You may be well advised to steer clear of Andy Yates, co-founder of the Cornelius-based Red Dome Group. In testimony at the hearing regarding GOP ballot fraud in North Carolina's 9th district, Mr Yates admitted he believed that noted ratfucker McCrae Dowless was totally above board in his operations because Dowless told him so.

The Bladen County political operative at the center of possible election fraud in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District assured the top consultant for Republican Mark Harris’ campaign that he was running a legal operation throughout the 2018 election, the consultant said Tuesday.

And he believed McCrae Dowless through Harris’ upset victory in the primary and an apparent victory in the general election. He believed Dowless until Monday, the first day of testimony before the state board of elections into voting irregularities in the district.

“I don’t know what to believe about McCrae Dowless. I don’t know whether or not to believe anything Mr. Dowless ever told me,” said Andy Yates, co-founder of the Cornelius-based Red Dome Group, a political consulting firm.

Yates testified on the second day of the board’s hearing that Dowless knew the details of absentee ballot law well and preached that he and his workers were following it carefully. He spoke one day after workers for Dowless outlined the illegal collection of mail-in absentee ballots.

“I’ve worked too hard to build up my reputation in this business, worked too hard to build up Red Dome, to hire one person and let all that be torn down,” Yates said.

State board investigators on Monday said they had uncovered “a coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme operated during the 2018 general election in Bladen and Robeson counties.” The counties are located within the 9th district. The state board has declined to certify results in the district. Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in unofficial totals.

Dowless, a convicted felon and elected official in Bladen County, is at the center of the investigation. Dowless declined to testify Monday unless he was granted immunity. Yates said Harris personally hired Dowless to conduct get-out-the-vote operations in Bladen County before Harris hired Yates.

“I felt Mr. Dowless was a done deal before I was even brought onto the campaign,” Yates testified.

In several hours of testimony, Yates explained Dowless’ relationship with the Harris campaign — chronicling near-daily phone conversations between himself and Dowless, Dowless’ craving of political information, “frequent conversations” between Harris and Dowless and how little oversight Red Dome had over Dowless, which did not require him to turn in printed invoices.

It would appear that Mr Yates did not work hard enough to protect his reputation and his business. In the world of Republican politics however, he may be making a name for himself in future campaigns.