UPDATE: On July 7th, the Daily Beast reported that Herschel Walker lied about his secret kids to his own campaign.
Georgia athletic icon and U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker is in desperate need of positive news to break in his favor. During the past two weeks, sitting Senator Raphael Warnock has pulled ahead of Walker in a race where Walker was considered an easy favorite, based on the combined power of his name recognition and overall national trends. Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and sparked the attention of more Democratic voters who would have otherwise been idle, Walker was wading through several rough days of damning reports released, including a revelation that Walker was father to children hitherto unknown to the general public.
Political campaign days are like years, and in this race, they are like dog years. While there are still several months for Walker to regain lost ground before the 2022 Midterm Election Day, anyone following this race will tell you that Walker’s popularity seems as if it peaked two months ago. The elimination of governing experience as a baseline standard will continue to produce more candidates whose vulnerabilities aren’t exposed until after they’ve emerged as public favorites or the party’s nominee. Georgia’s Senate race is the most recent example of this trend, where Walker went from a promising disrupter to the biggest liability among the entire GOP field of 2022 Senate candidates. Since 2016, staunch supporters of Trump dramatically altered the Republican Party’s approach to candidates formerly negatively viewed as incompetent and unqualified outsiders.
Prior to the primary election, idealist Georgia Republicans naively hoped Georgie voters, including married female voters in the suburbs, would embrace Walker with open arms. Most signs now indicate that suburban female demographic bloc will rank among Walker’s weakest support groups by the time General Election ballots are distributed.
Georgia political talkshow host Ben Burnett offered his take to New South Politics. “The celebrity culture the Republicans have gravitated to is a slippery slope,” he said. Burnett, a former Alpharetta City Council member and member of the Dickey Broadcasting Company Family, said Walker coasted through a primary largely without having to talk about issues.
“The media and the Democrats aren’t going to play by the same set of rules,” Burnett said. “Georgia can’t be won any longer without suburban support. What Herschel Walker stands for will be on the ballot; but those voters care about who he is. Herschel was the only candidate in the primary ballot who could possibly lose to Senator Warnock. If Republicans can’t win this seat in 2022; in spite of how poorly the Democrats have performed. Republican primary voters who supported him have no one to blame but themselves.”
If Walker fails to defeat Warnock, Republicans should take the loss as a valuable lesson and revert back to a more thorough vetting process prior to primary campaign hype. That lesson could prove to be a silver lining for 2024, when even more will be at stake for the Peach State and the entire nation.
Since 2004, O’Hern has worked with political campaigns in roles ranging from major projects involving nationwide digital marketing for U.S. Presidential candidates, U.S. Congressmen, state governors, and state representatives. O’Hern’s journalism background includes news reporting and editing for various organizations and news publications in Alabama and Florida since 2002. O’Hern graduated from Samford University in Birmingham, Ala with a degree in journalism and a minor in political science.