Convicted sex offender offered opening prayer at rally for GOP Senate nominee in North Carolina

A pastor kicked off a recent campaign stop for Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee for Senate, with a prayer that asked God to bestow “integrity and honesty” upon the event and to right wrongs “hammered down on the conservative movement”.

The prayer was hardly unusual by North Carolina political standards. What was surprising was the man who delivered it. Pastor Daimon L King is a registered sex offender, twice sentenced to prison for convictions involving children, according to state and court records.

The episode occurred with two months to go in a marquee Senate race that could help decide which party controls the chamber after the November elections. It risks undermining one of Whatley’s central campaign arguments — that his Democratic opponent, former governor Roy Cooper, is soft on crime. And it could feed into an advertising blitz by Democrats that has targeted the Republican candidate’s association with another convicted sex offender, a former GOP official.

Whatley’s campaign declined to make him available for an interview. In a statement, campaign spokesperson DJ Griffin said Whatley did not know King, and the event “was NOT planned nor organised by the Whatley campaign, nor did the campaign invite any of the guests”.

He emphasised that King had been “invited by the hosts”, which he identified as the Craven County Republican Party.

Whatley served as chair of the North Carolina GOP from 2019 until President Donald Trump elevated him in 2024 to lead the Republican National Committee, a post he stepped down from to pursue the Senate seat at the president’s urging.

King’s prayer and Whatley’s association with the former GOP official Harvey L West jnr, the other convicted sex offender, could prove particularly problematic as the Republican Senate candidate seeks to shore up support from hard-right conservatives, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University who is not related to the former governor.

Anger in Trump’s base over the government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case pressured the president to sign legislation to release the records.

The documents, which detailed the deceased sex offender’s interactions with prominent figures in politics and business, pushed suspicions about powerful people and institutions that had circulated for years on the political right into a much broader public debate.

“The far right has not coalesced behind [Whatley], and these kinds of revelations will make that problem even greater,” Cooper said.

King, 60, is the leader of New Beginnings Celebration church in New Bern, a town near the North Carolina coast where the rally was held on August 28. The pastor has taken on an increasingly visible role in Republican politics in recent years. He presents himself as a pro-Trump black conservative and has served as a precinct chair for the Craven County GOP.