Two North Carolina races reveal how partisan loyalty and myths about sexual abuse can shield candidates from scrutiny over their ties to convicted sex offenders and their records on protecting survivors.
Republican candidates in two pivotal North Carolina races are being taken to task for their public association with convicted sex offenders who served time for taking indecent liberties with children.
Former North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley—the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate—and GOP Supreme Court candidate Sarah Stevens have been called to account in the lead-up to the midterm elections for accepting support from one or more individuals either formerly or currently on the state sex offender registry. That support includes campaign work, financial contributions and even public prayers.
North Carolina state Rep. Sarah Stevens (R), who resigned from the state House of Representatives in June to run for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, attended and accepted a donation from a fundraising picnic last year at the home of convicted sex offender Harvey West. Though Stevens said she “didn’t even know” West, she had appeared on his wife Kim West’s podcast to promote the picnic and was Facebook friends with Harvey West, a former police officer who served six years in prison after being convicted of five counts of indecent liberties with a child in 2000.
Whatley faced questions about his role in supporting West’s service on two North Carolina Republican committees, after the Asheville Watchdog reported in March that West had been appointed to both positions by Whatley, who was head of the North Carolina Republican Party at the time. Whatley, who subsequently served as Republican National Committee chair with President Trump’s backing, also received Trump’s blessing to pursue the North Carolina Senate seat for which he is currently campaigning.
West, who said that Whatley “utilized my skills and talents where they best fit,” called it “only half true” that he had been appointed by Whatley for the NC GOP roles. West said he was elected as chair of the 1st Congressional District committee by committee members—from 2019 until March 2026, when he resigned after the Asheville Watchdog story was published—but that he had been appointed by Whatley for a role on the party’s Plan of Organization Committee. Whatley’s campaign office declined to comment on that appointment, according to WRAL, and the North Carolina Republican Party “did not dispute West’s claim that Whatley appointed him to that Plan of Organization Committee.”
In a tit-for-tat response to concerns about Whatley’s role in West’s NC GOP positions, the party issued a press release countering that Whatley’s Democratic opponent Roy Cooper had once attended an event at which he took a photo with a convicted sex offender in 2018 when he was governor.
This month, ABC reported that Pastor Daimon L. King, a registered sex offender twice sentenced to prison for convictions involving children, led the opening prayer at a recent campaign stop for Whatley. King, who leads the Christian church New Beginnings Celebration, declared his church members “fully support and are behind” Whatley’s U.S. Senate candidacy.
According to the Raleigh News & Observer, this is the fourth time Whatley’s campaign has held events with leaders of churches involved in child abuse scandals.
The North Carolina Democratic Party has highlighted both Stevens’ and Whatley’s associations with West, underscoring their acceptance of his support and drawing parallels with their policy positions as protecting predators.
After an outside group, North Carolina Families First, released an ad campaign accusing Stevens of “protecting child predators throughout her decades-long career in law and politics,” the News & Observer published a fact check on these claims.
According to the News & Observer , Stevens fought a 2019 bipartisan bill (SB 199, The Safe Child Act) giving victims of childhood sexual abuse more time to sue their abusers by extending the civil statute of limitations from just three years—a limit set in the 19th century—to 20 years after turning 18. One of 10 Republicans and five Democrats to vote against the bill, Stevens said she was worried people would use the law to go after politicians and that it would be “a nightmare” for them to be able to prove their innocence so many years after the abuse had occurred.
After pushing to cut that extension by half, giving victims a tighter, 10-year deadline to report childhood sexual abuse, Stevens did support a companion bill. But in the debate “pitting victims’ rights against concerns about business liability and false accusations,” according to WRAL, Stevens leaned toward protecting business interests and showed concern for accused perpetrators of childhood sexual abuse over their victims. Despite the established rarity of false reporting of such crimes, Stevens said, “All you have to do is swear it happened,” adding, “They’re going to go after somebody with deep pockets.”
In 2024, Stevens blocked a bill to reform child welfare services that would have granted the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services greater oversight authority to protect children in the state foster care system. A WRAL documentary, Broken: Foster Care in North Carolina, had recently revealed a disjointed foster care system, in which two children had “died from abuse and starvation.” A state audit also showed safety guidelines were followed in fewer than 60 percent of reviewed cases across the state’s 100 counties.
But Senate Bill 625, drafted in response to these revelations, was opposed by Stevens as “too broad.” Though she supported the subsequent compromise version of the Fostering Care in NC Act that passed the House unanimously in 2025, she continued to express reservations about giving the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services too much power.
In debates over both the Fostering Care in NC Act and the Safe Child Act, Stevens supported restricting the scope and ability of the state to protect victims of abuse and neglect; in the former instance, by conjuring the specter of government overreach, and in the latter, by advancing the false narratives that women commonly lie about rape and sexual abuse and are likely to do so for financial gain—even when reporting offenses experienced in childhood. Such narratives constitute rape myths that can influence policy design by reinforcing stereotypes about victims, who are often negatively characterized.
A 2026 study published in the Journal of American College Health shows “Republicans are generally more likely than Democrats to endorse rape myths in this way, by downplaying victim claims, and emphasizing concerns about false accusations or political motives.” Evoking these beliefs translates to a preference for weaker protective policy mechanisms for victims, who are less likely to be believed. And those less protective policies for survivors also serve to protect the privilege of male perpetrators.
University of Oregon professor Gretchen Soderlund says there are differences between how Democrats and Republicans treat candidates in their own party who are associated with sexual scandals—such as Stevens and Whatley, by their association with Harvey West.
Republicans, Soderlund says, “seem to be able to effectively make the case to their party and their base that these are always already politically motivated attacks rather than actual transgressions or crimes.”
This sentiment is also associated with their propensity to see male perpetrators as victims rather than responsible parties when they are called to account for such crimes. Harvey West, who was a 28-year-old police officer when he was “arrested and charged with the statutory rape of three girls, two of them age 14 and the third age 16,” according to the Asheville Watchdog, denied being guilty of statutory rape, but pleaded guilty to 16 lesser charges for which he spent six years in prison and 10 years on the state’s sex-offender registry.
Twenty years later, West describes these events as “what happened to me” and asserts that he has earned “a right to be part of the political process,” expressing frustration that his past has become a current campaign issue.
After West’s past made headlines again this year, North Carolina state Sen. Norman Sanderson (R) said, “I’ve always found Harvey to be an exceptional leader … honest and direct to the point. … He’s done a good job.” Sanderson added, “I don’t know what the circumstances were in that situation—I’ve never asked—but I know the man now, and whatever happened to him during that time, he’s not that same person.”
Research shows Americans overall are less likely to support a candidate associated with or accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment, but that Democrats are significantly less likely to support such a candidate. Republicans, on the other hand, “do not strongly penalize candidates facing allegations of sexual assault or harassment,” according to a peer-reviewed study, especially when they are identified as Republicans.
This may help explain why West was selected as an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in 2021, though his past sex offender status was openly on the public record; why Whatley, who knew of West’s past, still accepted his support when it was useful to him; and why Stevens seemed angry and nonplussed by protests focused on her affiliation with West and, according to the N.C. Democratic Party, has refused calls to give up campaign funds raised with West’s help.
Still, there is some evidence in the larger national political context that affiliation with sex offenders may hurt candidates of any party affiliation. Trump’s base remains angry about the government’s handling of the Epstein files, and Whatley has struggled to fully unite and energize North Carolina’s Republican coalition, with signs of softer enthusiasm among some Trump-aligned and lower-propensity GOP voters.
And in North Carolina, after experiencing damaging backlash over Harvey West, the NC GOP, at their state convention in June, finalized “an eligibility requirement that bars those convicted of sexual abuse, violent felonies or child abuse from holding party office.”
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