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Pastor with sex offender convictions prayed at Whatley rally

North Carolina GOP Senate nominee's campaign says pastor was invited by county party, not campaign.

AI-assisted coverage comparison, editor-supervised · How this was made

Published
Pastor with sex offender convictions prayed at Whatley rally

What this story says

  • Pastor Daimon L. King, a registered sex offender with convictions involving children, delivered the opening prayer at a rally for North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley.
  • Whatley's campaign stated they did not know King and that the event was not planned or organised by the campaign.
  • King was invited by the Craven County Republican Party, according to Whatley's campaign spokesman.
  • The incident risks undermining Whatley's campaign argument that his opponent is soft on crime.

Who covered it

Left 54%(7)Centre 38%(5)Right 8%(1)

Percentages are shares of the 13 outlets carrying a published leaning rating. 2 of the 15 outlets we know ran this story carry no rating and are not counted in them. Coverage measured .

Trust

60/100

Craft

70/100

Hype

20/100

15 sources · methodology

Pastor Daimon L. King, a registered sex offender with prior convictions involving children, delivered the opening prayer at a rally for North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley. The prayer asked God to bestow “integrity and honesty” upon the event and to right wrongs “hammered down on the conservative movement.”

Whatley's campaign stated that they did not know King and that the event was not planned or organised by the campaign. A spokesman for Whatley's campaign said King had been invited by the Craven County Republican Party. Officials with the county party could not be reached for comment.

The incident occurred with two months remaining in a Senate race that could influence which party controls the chamber. It risks undermining Whatley's central campaign argument that his Democratic opponent is soft on crime. The situation could also feed into Democratic advertising that has targeted the Republican candidate's association with another convicted sex offender, former GOP official Harvey L. West Jr.

Records show King was convicted in 1998 for statutory rape and indecent liberties with a 15-year-old student, serving nearly five years in prison before parole. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to having sex with an underage female relative and served close to three years in prison. He is required under North Carolina law to register as a sex offender for life.

Whatley previously served as chairman of the North Carolina GOP and led the Republican National Committee before stepping down to pursue the Senate seat. Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, stated that King's prayer and Whatley's association with West could prove problematic for the Republican candidate seeking to shore up support from hard-right conservatives, suggesting such revelations would exacerbate existing challenges in coalescing support.

Disagreement on King's role

Whatley's campaign stated that the event was not planned or organised by them and that they did not know King. They emphasised that King had been "invited by the hosts," identified as the Craven County Republican Party. None of the provided digests offered an alternative account of how King came to be at the rally.

Omissions in coverage

None of the right-rated digests mention the specific details of Pastor King's prior convictions involving children, nor do they include the statement from political science professor Chris Cooper regarding the potential impact on Whatley's support from hard-right conservatives.

Still developing. We have re-checked which outlets are covering this 1 time, most recently on 12 Sept 2026, 00:00, and will add the sides that appear.

How each side covered it

Our own reading of the reporting listed below, written from the outlets’ articles rather than quoted from them. The reasoning is set out on our methodology page.

Left

7 rated outlets

  • Eight left-rated reports focused on Pastor Daimon L. King's status as a registered sex offender with prior convictions involving children. These reports highlighted that King delivered the opening prayer at a rally for North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley. They noted that the incident risks undermining Whatley's campaign argument about his opponent being soft on crime and mentioned his past association with another convicted sex offender, Harvey L. West Jr. The reports also detailed King's criminal convictions and prison sentences, as well as his requirement to register as a sex offender.

Centre

5 rated outlets

  • Four centre-rated reports led with the fact that Pastor Daimon L. King, a registered sex offender with prior convictions involving children, delivered the opening prayer at a rally for North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley. These reports included details about Whatley's campaign stating they did not know King and that the event was not planned by the campaign, with King having been invited by the Craven County Republican Party. The potential for the incident to undermine Whatley's campaign argument about his opponent being soft on crime was also noted.

Right

1 rated outlet

  • The single right-rated report focused on Pastor Daimon L. King delivering the opening prayer at a rally for North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley. The report noted that King is a registered sex offender with prior convictions involving children. It also included the statement from Whatley's campaign that they did not know King and that the event was not planned or organised by the campaign, with King having been invited by the Craven County Republican Party.

Questions about this coverage

How did the left and right cover Pastor with sex offender convictions prayed at Whatley rally?
Of the 13 outlets on this story carrying a published leaning rating, 54% are rated left, 38% are rated centre, 8% are rated right. Those percentages are shares of the rated outlets, not of every outlet that ran it, which was 15. The sections above set out what each side emphasised, in its own terms.
Is Pastor with sex offender convictions prayed at Whatley rally left or right?
Neither side dominates it. Of the 13 rated outlets on this story, 54% are rated left, 38% are rated centre, 8% are rated right, and no side holds the 70% this site would want before calling a field one-sided. A story is not left or right in any case; the outlets that carried it are what carry ratings.
Is the coverage of Pastor with sex offender convictions prayed at Whatley rally biased?
Pastor with sex offender convictions prayed at Whatley rally is one event reported by 15 outlets, and this page does not rate the story as biased or unbiased. What it publishes is the spread: which outlets ran it, where named rating organisations place each of them on the spectrum, and what each side chose to lead with. A leaning rating describes an outlet's record over time, not this article, and the two should not be run together.
Which outlets covered Pastor with sex offender convictions prayed at Whatley rally?
15 that we know of, every one of them listed further up this page with a link to its own report and to what we hold on the publisher. Nothing here is a summary of somebody else's summary: the outlets are named so the original reporting can be read.
Who is Pastor Daimon L. King?
Pastor Daimon L. King is a registered sex offender with prior convictions involving children. He delivered the opening prayer at a rally for North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley. Records show he was convicted in 1998 and again in 2010 for offenses involving children and is required to register as a sex offender for life.
What was Michael Whatley's campaign's response to the incident?
Whatley's campaign stated that they did not know Pastor King and that the event was not planned or organised by the campaign. A spokesman for the campaign indicated that King had been invited by the Craven County Republican Party, which hosted the event.
Why is this incident significant for Michael Whatley's campaign?
The incident risks undermining Michael Whatley's campaign argument that his opponent is soft on crime. It could also be used by Democrats to highlight his association with another convicted sex offender, former GOP official Harvey L. West Jr., potentially impacting his support among hard-right conservatives.

Read it at the source

15 outlets, grouped by the leaning a published rating gives them. Every headline links to the original; an underlined outlet name opens our profile of that publisher.

Left

7

Centre

5

Right

1

Not rated

2

How did this read?

About the coverage, not about the story. We do not ask whether you agree with what happened — we have no honest use for that answer.

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