Georgia on Our Minds: Will Herschel Walker Sink or Swim?

There is a temptation to believe that the storm clouds swirling around Herschel Walker as he attempts to win a crucial Senate seat in Georgia might well signal the political death knell for the longtime home state hero. Viewed from the opposite angle, the seemingly endless string of embarrassing claims regarding the private life of the former football star could in the end backfire on Democrats, but the depth of Walker’s present descent is reflected in one recent, admittedly outlier, poll showing him down by 12 points.

The latest troubling report is that Walker, a vocal pro-lifer, once bankrolled an abortion for an alleged girlfriend. When Walker denied the anonymous claim, it triggered his own son, an outgoing gay conservative, to unleash a blistering attack on social media alleging that his father was reckless, irresponsible and adulterous during his child-rearing years. But while the left sees overt hypocrisy amidst disqualifying revelations about the candidate’s character, the right sees the latest in a long line of ad hominem political smears reminiscent of those perpetrated against Donald Trump. In fact, what propelled Walker onto the political stage was his longtime relationship with Trump. He was the first headliner signed by the Donald’s football team in the old USFL, and their subsequent lengthy friendship led to a Senate endorsement from the 45th president, which in turn propelled him to a controversial nomination over more experienced candidates.

Walker has written about his battle years ago with mental illness, which he says he has since overcome, but which accounts for many of the allegations against him. Nevertheless, his troubles appear to outsiders – and many Republican operatives – as sufficiently disastrous to signal near-certain defeat for the GOP in this critical, traditionally conservative battleground. But some religious conservative leaders, such as Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, have rallied around him. And if you fully understand what the man has meant to the Peach State for more than 40 years, these revelations could ultimately provoke quite a different reaction. In fact, in the 36 hours following the report alleging he paid for that abortion, he pulled in a massive fundraising haul of more than $180,000.

The Legend of Herschel Walker

Herschel Walker is much more than just another Republican candidate. In 1980, he captured the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s best college football player – arguably the best of all-time – and carried his Georgia Bulldogs to their first national title in almost 40 years (their next title came just last year). And he did so with a separated shoulder, no less. That made him a genuinely heroic, legendary figure in the football-crazy state, and thus a likely beneficiary of substantial blowback on the right – and from Georgia football fans – against ad hominem attacks amplified by predominant left-wing media.

On the other hand, while Walker is a legendary figure, he is facing an opponent, Raphael Warnock, who serves as senior pastor of a legendary place, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. cut his teeth. The candidates will meet in a single debate on October 14, with Warnock holding a clear oratorical advantage as a preacher – a fact Walker has acknowledged, likely to set the bar for success as low as possible with his, shall we say, plain-spoken lexicon.

But Warnock has also been accused of domestic violence relating to his divorce, so neither candidate has exactly enhanced their public image in the course of this race. At the same time, there is at least one thing we can celebrate. The unusual occurrence of two black men running against each other in the upper chamber no longer draws blaring headlines by itself, but instead tends to elicit a simple nod of the head to acknowledge how far the country has come – as opposed to how it remains in the throes of systemic racism, as charged by the left.

Control of the US Senate sits on a knife’s edge. Republicans need to flip just one seat to take control - and the outcome in the Peach State will draw perhaps the most attention on Election Night. Along with Nevada, where GOP prospects look good, Georgia stands as the most likely Republican pickup. Warnock holds an advantage of just under four points according to the latest Real Clear Politics average of polls - driven by the aforementioned 12-point shock poll in Warnock’s favor. The winner will likely propel his party into control of the upper chamber of Congress.

Will Georgia, which cost Republicans the Senate when they lost both seats in that state in early 2021, be the site of a recurring nightmare for the GOP in 2022? Or will the political climate there revert to traditional form, after it famously moved leftward two years ago? Will Georgians ultimately embrace a longtime hero, and save the Senate for Republicans?