Welcome to another edition of Washington Secrets. Today, we take a look at the Republican Party in North Carolina, where officials simply can’t bring themselves to admit they made a mistake in allowing a convicted sex offender to become a leading fundraiser, and we finally have a date for the end of the American war in Iran …
For the past six years, conservatives in North Carolina have made the Down East Judicial Picnic a crucial stop on the fundraising circuit. Attendees pay up to $1,500 to chow down on hors d’oeuvres and rub shoulders with state supreme court justices and officeholders.
What some of the attendees knew was that the host, Harvey L. West, had a dark past.
In 1999, West was a police officer in a small town near the Outer Banks when he was arrested and charged with the statutory rape of three girls — two were aged 14 and one was 16. He eventually took a deal, pleading guilty to a string of lesser charges of “taking indecent liberties with a child.” After six years in prison, his name went on to the state’s sex-offender register, where it stayed until 2018.
Now, Michael Whatley, North Carolina’s Republican candidate for Senate, who attended these fundraisers, finds himself embroiled in a scandal that couldn’t have come at a worse time. He is under pressure to answer why he twice appointed West to one of the state party’s top rule-making bodies and allowed him to hold such a central role.
The matter casts a cloud not just over Republican efforts to hold the Senate seat being vacated by Thom Tillis, one of the key targets for Democrats hoping to flip the upper chamber, but all sorts of downballot races.
Democrats have been running their eye over photographs from the picnic, dripping out attacks on anyone who attended. Not to mention that it was a fundraiser for judicial candidates, for whom any sense of rubbing shoulders with felons might be a career ender.
But it’s not just Democrats who are asking questions. It is infuriating to people such as Michele Woodhouse, a GOP stalwart in the state’s 11th District, where she ran for Congress in 2021.
“There have been quite a few of us who have been ringing the bell on this for years,” she told Secrets. “We were just met with kind of ‘the good old boys network’ resistance and told it was no big deal. ‘Nothing to see here.’”
The result, she added, was that any official or candidate who attended the picnic is facing “blowback.”
“And you know, Michael Whatley has not denounced this at all,” she added.
READ MORE: Michael Whatley sticks close to Trump in battle against Roy Cooper
West launched his picnic in 2020, two years after coming off the sex offenders’ register. At the time, he was chairman of the 1st Congressional District committee.
His status only grew as the picnic went from strength to strength.
When Whatley took over as state party chairman in 2019, he twice appointed West to one of its most important bodies, the Plan of Organization Committee.
“Why did Michael appoint him to the Plan of Organization Committee … twice? And then kind of doubling down on the picnic,” said Woodhouse, pointing out it had been renamed the North Carolina Judicial Picnic to mark its statewide impact.
“Those are questions that Michael Whatley really should answer.”
So far, Whatley has declined to answer. His campaign did not respond to Secrets’s questions about how long he had known about West’s past or whether he regrets being involved with a convicted sex offender.
For his part, West resigned as chairman of the Republican 1st District Congressional as the controversy grew.
“People make mistakes, they serve their time, and they come back,” West told WRAL. “Isn’t that the whole point of rehabilitation, so they can go back into the community and serve?”
Back in 2012, West said he didn’t commit the crimes and only pleaded guilty to avoid spending decades in jail.
The state party is unrepentant about West’s role and has gone on the attack.
Matt Mercer, a spokesman for the state GOP, said: “People in glass houses should be very careful when it comes to working with and taking photos with and doing things with convicted child sex offenders.”
Last week, the party sent out a press release asking whether Roy Cooper, the former governor and the 2026 Democratic candidate for Senate, had promoted a child sex offender. It offered photographs of him at a 2018 LGBT awards gala, which was hosted by Chad Sevearance-Turner, a former youth minister who served a two-year sentence for lewd conduct with a child under the age of 16 in 2000.
None of it seems to be helping. Poll after poll puts Whatley behind Cooper in their race.
Andrew Bates, a Democratic strategist and North Carolina native who served in the Biden White House, accused Whatley of trying to hide the truth from voters.
“Whatley keeps proving that when it really counts, he chooses corrupt elites over everyday people — even if it puts North Carolina families and their children at risk,” he said.
Over by the state visit
On Tuesday, we got the clearest indication yet that President Donald Trump expects the war in Iran to be wrapped up in about three weeks or so. Not from the Pentagon, or Truth Social comments, or yesterday’s White House briefing that suggested the war may be over before the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.
No. It came from Buckingham Palace. It announced that King Charles III will visit Washington toward the end of April for the much-heralded state visit.
Okay, the dates will be finalized nearer to the time, said the Palace, although Trump himself soon after announced Charles would be in town from April 27 to 30. But officials on both sides have quietly suggested that ongoing military operations would be a bad look for heads of state and their entourages to be whooping it up in formal dress at state banquets. So that’s that then.
Buttigieg 2028?
It is perhaps the least surprising news of the year so far, but Pete Buttigieg, former transportation secretary, has given the clearest hint that he is preparing a presidential run.
During an Institute of Politics forum at Harvard on Monday night, he was asked how the country could be turned around, according to an account published by the Harvard Crimson.
Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust asked: “How do we get there? We need to have a better president.”
Another member of the panel, Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude, pointed at the former presidential candidate.
Buttigieg smiled and said, “I’m working on it!”
Cue laughter.
Lunchtime reading
Conservative think tanks jostle for influence months after Heritage Foundation exodus: Former Vice President Mike Pence’s think tank is on the up. But can Advancing American Freedom make it stick?
The man behind Donald Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship: “John Eastman is about to realize a decades-long dream: getting the Supreme Court to consider his radical theory that the Constitution doesn’t automatically confer citizenship on those born in the U.S.”
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