It’s time for a fact check of North Carolina politics. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley is facing questions after a report that he appointed a convicted sex offender to state party leadership positions. The outlet Asheville Watchdog reports that Whatley made the appointments while he was chair of the state GOP between 2019 and 2024. Paul Specht of WRAL joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for more.
Marshall Terry: Asheville Watchdog published this report not long after Whatley won last month’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Who is the person Whatley is accused of appointing and to what positions exactly?
Paul Specht: His name is Harvey West Jr. and he pleaded guilty to some sex offenses back in the year 2000 and was released from state custody in the year 2006. Since then, he's been involved in the North Carolina Republican Party out in what's now the 1st Congressional District.
The Asheville Watchdog reported that Whatley had appointed West as the chairman of the 1st Congressional District Committee, as well as the party's Plan of Organization Committee. These are volunteer organizations. The district committees are in charge of organizing events and helping recruit volunteers and with get-out-the-vote efforts. The Plan of Organization Committee is in charge of coming up with party rules and things like that.
Terry: And to be clear, West had been appointed to state GOP positions before Whatley became chair, and those appointments also drew scrutiny, right?
Specht: That's right. Back in 2012, West was assigned to be an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention. When the News and Observer reported on his criminal past, he took his name out of that position and told me that he didn't want to be a distraction. We got him on the phone last week and he talked about his work with the party through the years and how every once in a while, people dig up his past, his criminal conviction, and use it against him or use it against someone else, in this case.
Terry: How has Whatley responded?
Specht: Whatley hasn't responded to our questions, or at least his campaign hasn't. We started to fact-check this because of reporting by the Asheville Watchdog. They didn't include documentation to support all of the things that they reported.
For instance, they reported that Whatley appointed West as chairman of the 1st Congressional District Committee. It turns out that's not true. We reached out to the reporter and he said he got that one wrong. They did report that Whatley appointed West to the Plan of Organization Committee. It turned out that that was true, according to West. Again, we only have West's account to go by. We also reached out to the North Carolina Republican Party, and they did answer some of our questions by email. They did not dispute West's claim that Whatley appointed West to the Plan of Organization Committee. They did, though, point out that West was appointed to that committee by other chairmen even before Whatley came on the scene in 2019.
Terry: Last week, the GOP accused Whatley’s opponent in this year’s Senate race, Democrat and former Gov. Roy Cooper, of “hanging out” with a convicted sex offender named Chad Turner. What are they referring to there?
Specht: That was one of the things that the North Carolina Republican Party responded with when I reached out to them. They said there is a man named Chad Turner. He leads a LGBTQ+ chamber of commerce in Charlotte and Cooper at one point attended the organization's end-of-year party and is seen in a photo with Mr. Turner, who we also reached out to and didn't receive a response from. The Cooper campaign responded and said we don't view these two as the same. They said, I'm paraphrasing, attending an event where someone else is is not the same as appointing someone to a party committee.
Terry: Normally, I ask you how you rated these claims, but you didn’t assign a rating this time. Why not?
Specht: We felt it was more important to just lay out what we knew. We reached out to all these people involved. Here's what they told us, and people can read and decide for themselves what they think.
These fact checks are a collaboration between PolitiFact and WRAL.
