Herschel Walker, a former professional athlete, is flailing. His frequent gaffes and leaden style on the stump have marred his Senate campaign in Georgia
McConnell, the top-ranking Republican in America’s Senate, complained that “candidate quality” could cost his party the upper chamber of Congress at the midterm elections, he was surely thinking of Herschel Walker. A Republican running in—until recently a ruby-red state—ought to be on the front foot. But Mr Walker, a former professional athlete, is flailing. His frequent gaffes and leaden style on the stump have marred his campaign.
Mr Walker was raised in poor, rural Georgia, one of seven siblings. He made his name at the University of Georgia playing American football. In 1982 he won the Heisman trophy, an award for the best college player in the country, and later joined the now-defunct United States Football League. Mr Trump bought Mr Walker’s first team, the New Jersey Generals, in 1984. The property tycoon, Mr Walker says, became a mentor and model for his post-football foray into business.
He certainly seems to have applied his mentor’s taste for embellishment—first, to hawking chickens. He retired from the National Football League in 1997 and later founded Renaissance Man Food Services, a meat-distribution firm. He once claimed that the company employed hundreds of people and made $70m in annual sales. Neither appears to have been remotely true. The firm reported having eight employees in 2020; in court testimony Mr Walker put its profits at $1.5m a year.
Mr Walker’s personal life has proved most troubling. Several women have accused him of threatening behaviour; in 2005 his ex-wife sought a restraining order against him. Mr Walker has attributed his displays of aggression to dissociative identity disorder, a mental disorder characterised by amnesia and the assumption of alternate identities. Though he is a vocal critic of absentee African-American fathers, he only publicly acknowledged three of his four children in June.
That Republicans got saddled with Mr Walker is a testament to Mr Trump’s ability to sway the party’s base. This makes him a powerful kingmaker. But Georgia’s broader electorate appears unconvinced by the former’s president’s nominee.
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