LUMBERTON — Republican Dan Bishop won a special election on Tuesday, and will represent Robeson County and the rest of N.C. District 9 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
With 208 of 210 precincts reporting, Bishop, a state senator, had 94,984 votes, almost 51 percent, to Democrat Dan McCready’s 90,824 votes, or 48.5 percent. He will take the seat that has been vacant since Rep. Robert Pittenger, a Republican, left it in January.
For Robeson County, McCready won with 10,518 votes to 10,285, with all 39 precincts reporting. Jeff Scott, a Libertarian, and Allen Smith, of the Green Party, had 58 and 40 votes, respectively.
In all, 20,901 ballots were cast in Robeson, just more than 29 percent of the 71,465 registered voters.
The special election was ordered after the State Board of Elections nullified Republican Mark Harris’ apparent victory over McCready in the 2018 general election after finding evidence of absentee voter fraud in Bladen County that raised questions about the validity of the election.
But Robeson County might have been decisive, as McCready won 56 percent to about 41 percent in the 2018 general election, a margin of about 4,700 votes, but could not repeat that performance this time.
