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Greg Bluestein, a political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has known Herschel Walker’s name for decades. “I grew up hearing stories about Herschel Walker, and had friends with posters of him on their walls,” he told me. “To this day, I know hardcore Democrats whose dogs are named Herschel or Walker, or whose garage codes are set for his team number. That gives you a glimpse of just what a big deal he is in Georgia.” Indeed, Herschel Walker’s athletic record made him a state icon—he’s not only a former college football and NFL star, but he once also competed on the Olympic bobsledding team. Yet Walker’s history of violent or erratic behavior is almost as well-known as his speed on the football field; his ex-wife once accused him of holding a gun to her head and choking her. Now, in his campaign to unseat Democrat Raphael Warnock as the senior senator from Georgia, Republican candidate Herschel Walker is also fighting off allegations he paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, even though he publicly claims abortion should not be available to anyone under any circumstances. To take stock of Walker’s reputation on and off the field, the stakes of his Senate run, and the controversies swirling just weeks before the midterms’ Election Day, I spoke with Bluestein for Wednesday’s episode of What Next. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mary Harris: Were you surprised when Herschel Walker switched over to politics?
Greg Bluestein: Not terribly surprised, only because oftentimes in the South, you know, college football figures do get into politics. Mark Richt, the University of Georgia’s former football coach, was once floated as a candidate for governor. Tommy Tuberville, former college football coach in Alabama, is now a U.S. senator. So it wasn’t surprising to see Walker’s name floated, but it was definitely more of a surprise to see him actually jump in the race.
Have all of his scandals surprised you?
With the extent of the scandals, sure. Right. But even when he got in the race, I wrote something to the effect of how the unknowns of his life are what could really hamper his campaign. There were a lot of red flags already about his propensity toward falsehoods, but not to the extent we’ve seen now. At this point, even if he wins, he is no longer the icon that he once was in Georgia.
I want to start the story of the Senate race in Georgia two years back, not with Herschel Walker, but with Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat he is running against. I’m wondering if you can explain, from a Georgian perspective, what made this election such a big deal.
Well, first, it was part of two elections. That was unique in the first place because we had the regular six-year election between David Perdue and Jon Ossoff. But then you add to that Johnny Isakson, the late U.S. senator who had stepped down a couple of years early because he was battling with Parkinson’s disease, and that opened up a special election for the seat Warnock ran for.
The whole state was in play.
At the time, I wrote that Johnny Isakson stepping down could give Georgia dual Senate races that could decide control of the U.S. Senate, which is what happened. Warnock had never run for public office before. He was the reverend of Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.’s pulpit. So it’s a historic and legendary Baptist church, which is very well known in Atlanta civic community and to many in political circles. But outside of that, to your average Georgian, he was not a household name whatsoever. He would go down to campaign events in rural Georgia and there’d be longer lines to greet the local mayor or to see the county commissioner than to see who this Warnock guy was.
Warnock is also the first Black man to represent Georgia in the Senate. How did that affect how he was seen in the state?
He’s one of only about 10 Black senators in the nation’s history, the first in Georgia, and only one of the few in the South. And he’s leaned into issues that are that are of significant importance to the Black community. He’s been arrested for protesting the state’s refusal to expand Medicaid. He’s talked about affordable housing and homelessness and economic equity and voting rights. He gave John Lewis his eulogy in the middle of the 2020 campaign, talking about all those issues that Lewis—who was one of his parishioners—had championed.
For Republicans, was this Senate election a warning of sorts? If it was, what were they hearing in this warning?
It was the moment things changed in Georgia because Democrats who had long said “we’re on the cusp of victory here” could claim victory. They flipped the presidential race for the first time since 1992 and won these two U.S. Senate seats that gave Democrats control of the chamber.
Herschel Walker wasn’t exactly the local Republican Party’s idea of a good Senate candidate. But in early 2021, as he was considering a run, Walker got a crucial assist from an old friend: Donald Trump.
Donald Trump had been forbidden from Twitter at the time, so he sent out an email blast saying that if Herschel Walker ran for U.S. Senate, he would be unstoppable in Georgia. Trump’s endorsement in Georgia was a golden ticket, and that froze the field. All these other Republicans who were thinking about running, they basically either froze their plans or abandoned them altogether.
However, I actually do think Walker could have could have easily won the Republican nomination with or without Trump, based on Walker’s name recognition alone. As long as he didn’t flame out during a campaign, I felt like, he could do it. That’s just how high of a status he has. I mean, one Republican operative said he’s basically the pope in Georgia.
Over the summer is when I first began to hear about fresh scandals involving Herschel Walker. At first the Daily Beast was reporting that Walker had what they were calling “secret children,” whom he had never acknowledged before. Then, earlier this month, the Daily Beast again reported about how Walker allegedly paid for an ex’s abortion. It is striking considering that in the wake of Dobbs, Walker had said he opposed abortion with zero exceptions. And not just that, but his son Christian Walker came out against his father in a way that we haven’t seen before.
Those abortion reports really crystallized the story, which, by the way, Walker says is a flat-out lie. He’s threatened to file a defamation lawsuit, though that hasn’t been happened.
then you add to that Christian Walker, his 23-year-old son and a social media figure in his own right with hundreds of thousands of followers. He’s sort of a conservative brand out there. In the wake of this Daily Beast report, he had a very emotional, raw video that he posted on Twitter talking about how he urged his father not to run, how he warned him that the uncomfortable parts of his past would reemerge, how the family said Herschel was making a mockery out of himself with the run, and that Herschel threatened violence against him and his mother multiple times. They had to move six times. That made this an even bigger story that really resonated with voters. It’s going to be hard to find many voters who haven’t at least heard something about this over the past week.
How are voters responding when you go out to events with Walker?
There are three buckets of voters, by and large. On the GOP side, there are those who think this is all fake news. Then, there are those who believe the allegations and say it doesn’t change their calculus—who say that they don’t like Walker and weren’t that comfortable with him a candidate from jump, but are going to support him because it means voting for a Republican-controlled Senate. The third group is this narrow band of split-ticket voters: About 9 percent of backers of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp say they’re going to support Warnock, and another 5 percent of those Kemp supporters say they’ll vote for the libertarian candidate. Those are significant numbers that could really change the dynamic here in Georgia.
There’s no mechanism to replace Walker on the ballot this late in the game, right?
Yeah. I mean, you’d have to have Walker’s support for that, and he’s a fighter, so he and his advisers have essentially said there’s no chance he would ever back out, even before this. But now the ballots have been, you know, mailed out to voters who requested absentee forms. So it is far too late.
As Walker has been fighting off attacks on his credibility, he’s been urging the media and prospective voters to look into his competitor’s past. Right-wing media has been playing footage from 2020 that seems to show what happened when police were called to mediate between Warnock and his ex. In the tape, Warnock’s ex-wife tells Atlanta police officers that he’d ran over her foot with his car during an argument outside her townhouse. She also describes him as someone who is “really good at putting on a show. ” Warnock was not charged with a crime, and medical officials didn’t find visible signs of injury to the foot. Warnock told you that his ex’s allegations “didn’t happen.” And in his current campaign, Warnock seems loath to use details of Walker’s personal life against him.
I asked Warnock for his take on the Daily Beast reports about Walker, and he basically said, Look, I’m not going to get into that, I’m going to focus on my stance on abortion. He’s continued to do that. He’s trying to keep the base energized, but he’s going after those swing voters, those Walker skeptics who were showing up in data and polls long before these Daily Beast stories. There was already a huge number of Republicans and independents who were very, very squeamish about Herschel Walker. I was going door-knocking with some Republican canvassers a few weeks ago for a story I was writing, and in the second house we hit, the canvassers said, We assume you’re a reliably Republican voter, and we assume you’ll be voting GOP down the ticket, and the guy stopped them right there and said, I’ll be voting Republican down the ticket for everyone but Herschel Walker. I just can’t vote for the guy.
Wow. Did he say why?
He said Walker was unfit for office.
So Warnock’s argument is hitting.
Yeah, and his strategy is really interesting because he’s going after these swing voters in a very pronounced way. I mean, on the campaign trail, he talks more about working with Ted Cruz and Tommy Tuberville on bipartisan legislation than he does about working with Joe Biden.
Ted Cruz?
It’s funny because he always gets a gasp from the audience, and it’s usually a liberal audience. He was saying the other day, Ted Cruz wanted a highway extension from Texas to Georgia, and I figured it made sense for Georgians and it helped our military bases because it would go by a number of military installations. That’s Warnock’s argument, basically, that he’ll work with whomever it takes if it’s good for Georgia.
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With the margins of victory so tight in Georgia, my understanding is that there’s a pretty significant chance this race goes to a runoff. Is that what your experts are telling you?
Yeah, we’ve seen very few polls that show either of the candidates above the 50 percent mark, which is what you need to get to avoid a runoff. You might see even more of that trend because usually a third-party candidate in Georgia might get 1 percent or 2 percent of the vote.
How will a runoff change the dynamics of this race?
If we do see a runoff, it’s a different ballgame. We’re just not sure what that would mean. If Senate control is at stake again, like it was in 2020–21 with our last runoff, then you see hundreds of millions of dollars being spent. It resets the race. The Republican message to Walker skeptics will basically be, hold your nose and vote for him because you’re voting against Joe Biden. You’re voting against Democratic control of the Senate. But if it’s for seat 52, say, there could be lower turnout. There’ll still be a ton of money spent in Georgia, but not with nearly the urgency as for a Senate-control-deciding seat. If Herschel Walker can make it to a runoff, he can say, Hey, they threw everything they had at me, and the Democrat still didn’t win. And Warnock, his staff, and his allies have been preparing for the possibility of a runoff for a long time now.
