Asheville Watchdog: “I sought comment from Whatley and his campaign spokesman about his support of West by email and text but received no response.”

New reporting from the Asheville Watchdog reveals DC insider Michael Whatley “champion[ed] the rise to power” of convicted child sex predator Harry Lee West Jr. while serving as NCGOP Chair.

Whatley’s own party is blasting him for elevating and protecting child predators, calling Whatley’s ties to West “the worst kept secret in the Republican Party.” Whatley refused to answer for using his position of power to elevate a child predator.

“It’s disgusting and horrifying that Michael Whatley used his position of power to elevate a convicted child sex predator,” said Mallory Payne, senior communications advisor for the North Carolina Democratic Party. “Whatley doesn’t care about North Carolinians’ safety – he’s only looking out for himself and his political allies, even if they’re child predators.”

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Asheville Watchdog: Democracy Watch: Links between convicted sex offender, state GOP leadership may complicate candidacies

Tom Fiedler | March 11, 2026

• Several of the state Republican Party’s major candidates, including U.S. Senate nominee Michael Whatley, face a brewing intraparty revolt ignited by their ties to a convicted sex offender-turned-party leader and financial backer of GOP campaigns.

• Whatley, former chairman of the state and national Republican Party, is at the center of the spreading revolt after championing the rise to power of Harvey L. West Jr. Whatley appointed West to lead the GOP’s 1st Congressional District committee in the state’s eastern corner, and to head the party’s powerful Plan of Organization committee, which effectively controls rulemaking.

• West, 54, was a 28-year-old police officer in Washington, a small town in Beaufort County near the Outer Banks, in 1999 when he was arrested and charged with the statutory rape of three girls, two aged 14 and one aged 16. The charge is among the state’s most serious felonies and is defined legally as sexual intercourse with a person aged 15 or younger and the perpetrator is at least six years older. Consent is not a defense.

• West agreed to plead guilty to 16 lesser charges of taking indecent liberties with a child and served six years in prison. His plea agreement also required that, upon completing the sentence, he be included on the North Carolina sex-offender registry for a minimum of 10 years.

• I sought comment from Whatley and his campaign spokesman about his support of West by email and text but received no response. The Whatley campaign doesn’t provide contact information for the news media. 

• Previous attempts to sideline West and others alleged to have committed sex crimes have failed, stymied inside closed committee rooms. A resolution backed by Henderson County GOP activist Michele Woodhouse barring the party from holding events at a “venue owned by a convicted felon,” was killed at Whatley’s direction when he led the state party, Woodhouse told me. 

• Woodhouse, the former chairwoman of the Republican Party’s 11th Congressional District that includes Buncombe and Henderson counties, called Whatley’s ties to West “the worst kept secret in the Republican Party.” When I asked her by text if she thought the emergence of West’s past could impact Whatley’s campaign, she replied with the “100 percent” emoji.

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