ELIZABETHTOWN — McCrae Dowless was hospitalized in Wilmington on Wednesday, delaying his scheduled sentencing in federal court that had been set for early in the afternoon.
Published reports said he suffered a stroke. Cynthia Singletary, who has served previously as legal counsel for Dowless, told a Raleigh media company he was flown by helicopter from Bladen County Hospital to a Wilmington hospital “under emergency conditions.”
Dowless is well known in Bladen County in part because of his involvement with politics. He’s worked for Republicans and Democrats through the years, including candidates who won county commissioner seats and even the incumbent sheriff. In more recent years’ campaign filings with the state Board of Elections, he’s listed as being employed to help get voters out to the polls.
In February 2019, he was front and center of an evidentiary hearing connected to the November 2018 election that drew national attention. The election accusations within Bladen County were further sensationalized in the form of documentary and book.
Dowless, in June, pleaded guilty to stealing from the United States government. The 65-year-old concealed “his work and income while receiving monthly benefits payments” from the Social Security Adminstration, said a release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud and could face a maximum jail sentence of 15 years.
Dowless claimed he was unable to work due to a disability in paperwork he filed in February 2013 with the Social Security Administration. When he applied for Retirement Insurance Benefits in 2018, “Dowless stated that he did not expect to work in 2018 and had not worked in the two years preceding his application,” the release said.
For the 2018 midterm election cycle, between March 2017 and November 2018, Dowless received “at least 59 checks totaling $135,365.57 for consulting work,” the release says.
Dowless has previous felony convictions in 1995 for fraud and in 1992 for perjury. He served six months in prison for trying to forge a dead man’s signature on a life insurance policy with a date days before his death.
The 2018 race for a seat in Congress, along with two races in Bladen County, were not certified and had to be held again after the evidentiary hearing. Denied winning the state’s District 9 seat to the U.S. House of Representatives was the Rev. Mark Harris, a Republican; and denied a seat on the Bladen County commissioners was the late Russell Priest, though Priest did eventually win the election redo by four votes.
Harris, however, chose not to run again. His Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, did run and was beaten by Dan Bishop, who had been serving as a state senator.
Well before former President Donald Trump claimed “an election was stolen,” there were accusations from supporters of both Harris and McCready who said an election was stolen from their candidate.
The testimony in the evidentiary hearing pointed to Dowless as the primary architect of a scheme in which people were paid to do things that were not in compliance with the law. For example, the workers would mark choices on absentee ballots, witnesses testified.
Dowless was arrested on Feb. 27, 2019, with several charges filed that included obstruction of justice, perjury, solicitation to commit perjury, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and possession of an absentee ballot. Ten others were arrested in subsequent weeks.
Dowless has not been convicted of the charges related to absentee ballots.