Trump is convinced that celebrity trumps any experience because it worked for him. If you’ve got a name, you can win. And he’s not entirely wrong. Plenty of sports stars have gone into politics and some Hollywood celebrities have even gone on to become president.
But his cynical choice of Herschel Walker, a Black football star from 30 years ago who played college ball in Georgia, to run against Raphael Warnock next November may have been another mistake. (For someone who insists that he is a kingmaker he sure seems to be making a lot of them.)Walker is a big fan of Trump’s and spoke at the White House Republican Convention extravaganza in 2020. Trump thinks he’s been very clever picking a sports star — and that Georgia Republicans will do what he tells them to do:
Herschel Walker, the former football star who’s armed with former President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement, has been on a glide path to the GOP nomination since announcing his Senate bid in Georgia. Not a dime has been spent attacking him on television.
That’s about to change dramatically.
In the eight weeks running up to the May 24 primary, two super PACs supporting Walker’s GOP rivals plan to drop millions of dollars in ads attacking Walker, according to people familiar with their spending plans — ad buys that stand to alter the shape of a race that could decide control of the Senate.
Walker is still expected to finish first in the primary. But his opponents intend to drive his support under 50 percent and force him into a June runoff, when the second-place finisher will be able to focus attention on what many Georgia Republicans contend is Walker’s unique vulnerability to Democratic attack: his history of alleged domestic abuse.
With one of the Senate’s top fundraisers, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, looming in the fall, some Republicans fear Walker won’t be able to survive the onslaught of Democratic attack ads.
At a meeting of the Putnam County Republican Party on Monday night, Walker’s leading challenger, state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, closed his stump speech with an impassioned appeal for the crowd to do their research on Walker.
“Folks, he can’t win in November,” Black said, raising his voice as he spoke. “The baggage is too heavy. It’ll never happen.”
“Let the Democrats pour $140 million on top of domestic violence and threatening shootouts with police,” he added. “Let that happen. That discussion is going to be had right now. I’m pretty passionate about that.”
Black was referring to police reports documenting Walker’s past run-ins with law enforcement and instances of alleged domestic violence. Walker has publicly discussed his long history with mental illness.
Black and former Navy SEAL officer Latham Saddler, two of the six Republicans vying for the Senate nomination, are being aided by new super PACs that each plan to soon make seven-figure ad buys attacking Walker and highlighting their candidates as a sensible alternative. Representatives of the super PACs declined to say how much money they’ve raised to date.
“Everybody seems to feel like Herschel is kind of inevitable,” said Tyler Foote, a Republican consultant working on the Georgia First PAC to support Saddler. “None of the surveys, at least that I’ve seen so far, are actually testing the negative hits against Herschel. They’re just doing the horse race.”
So far, very little has been spent going negative on Walker — and specifically, no ads have appeared yet on television. Foote said his independent expenditure group plans to collaborate with Defend Georgia, the super PAC backing Black, to be strategic on anti-Walker messaging in the coming weeks.
Polling conducted by Georgia First PAC in December sought to answer not who was closest behind Walker, but “can Herschel Walker really be beat” in a primary, Foote said. “And yeah, he can.”
After informing voters about Walker’s history of alleged domestic violence — which includes his ex-wife being granted a restraining order after she told police Walker pointed a gun at her head and choked her unconscious — as well as other points about his business record and stance on immigration, the group said his vote share dropped to 34 percent.
That polling was conducted by Ingress Strategies among 890 likely Republican primary voters, half through landline interviews and half through mobile text response, with a margin of error of 3.9 percent.
Similarly, a memo sent March 18 to Black’s donors, obtained by POLITICO, says Black’s campaign hired Meeting Street Insights to conduct internal polling in late February and found Walker’s support dropped to 38 percent after Republican primary voters were informed about past allegations and his support for granting a pathway to citizenship to some immigrants living in the country illegally. The pollster interviewed 500 primary voters on landlines and cellphones with a margin of error of 4.4 percent.
A Fox News poll conducted in early March found support for Walker at 66 percent among GOP primary voters — far ahead of Black at 8 percent, and the other candidates in the low single digits. But the Fox survey showed Walker’s support slipping since polls conducted this winter by Quinnipiac University and The Trafalgar Group found him at 81 and 70 percent, respectively.
Walker spokesperson Mallory Blount rebuffed in a statement the idea that Walker’s support had fallen and that there was any chance of a runoff occurring.
“There’s been zero drop in poll numbers since this race started,” she said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is silly. The other Republicans in this race are at less than 15% combined. Their only strategy to gain any sort of relevance is to obsess over Herschel. Herschel is solely focused on beating Raphael Warnock.”
We’ll see how that works out. Walker is a nightmare candidate. But then so was Trump.