It’s been a long journey for Herschel Walker’s Georgia Senate campaign, which will conclude with a runoff election against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock on Dec. 6. A long journey metaphorically, for sure, and apparently also geographically:
“I live in Texas,” Walker said in January of this year, when speaking to University of Georgia College Republicans.
That is a sentence from CNN, which has been doing some good reporting on the question of where Walker lives, including this report which notes that he takes a tax exemption for his Dallas-area Texas home. It is a tax exemption that is only supposed to apply to primary residences.
Here is a visual illustration of the difference between Texas and Georgia:
Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, telling college students and tax officials that he lives in Texas does not necessarily disqualify Walker from counting as an “inhabitant” of Georgia under the state’s laws, which is the only standard the Constitution requires senators to meet. It does, however, emphasize even further that a vote for Walker is the apotheosis of the idea that many members of Congress could be cardboard cutouts whose votes are determined by caucus leaders. Consider the following about Walker’s Georgia Senate candidacy:
• His statements about political issues evince little evidence of his having learned or thought about any of them, e.g., and most famously, his suggestion to delegate a department, presumably governmental, to “look at young men that’s looking at women” on social media in order to prevent mass shootings.
• The claims he makes about his qualifications (that he’s a former valedictorian, police officer, successful entrepreneur, etc.) are largely false.
• He (allegedly) does not actually believe that women should never have abortions despite this being arguably the most important policy viewpoint that differentiates his party from his opponent’s.
• He lives in Texas.
It’s fine, though. Senators don’t have to do much work, and, in a roundabout way, a vote for Walker, after all this, will actually send a very clear message about what one wants to get out of government. Georgians, make your voice heard on Dec. 6!
