I take no joy in writing this.
But our Herschel Walker nightmare, it appears, is over.
When I say “our” I mean Black people.
Since Donald Trump, and by default, the Republican Party, hoisted Walker onto the political stage last August to challenge Raphael Warnock in hopes that he would become the junior senator from Georgia, I, along with millions, had borne witness to what can best be described as a mess dominated by talk of vampires, werewolves, cows and China’s bad air.
Walker’s senatorial loss in Tuesday’s runoff to Warnock was a sad end to what many Black people have thought all along — Herschel Junior Walker was not the best representation of what Black people had to offer on a political stage or anywhere else.
“Walker appears to be a clown, he is just not a serious person,” said 42-year-old Marietta voter Nicholas Brown. “It’s one thing to be Black and a Republican, but it’s another thing to go on TV making a mockery of yourself. I am ashamed every time Mr. Walker is on TV, because I know why he is there and it’s sad that he is letting people use him like this.”
Let’s keep it real. Walker was put on the Republican ticket as a color-coded counter to Warnock and an attempt to appeal to Black voters and convince them that the grass is greener in the GOP.
Aesthetically and politically, there is nothing wrong with that. One of the great things about America is that anybody and everybody — from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama to Marjorie Taylor Greene — is free to run for political office, regardless of their qualifications or background.
Black people are not monolithic and it would be a good thing for the country if more of us showed interest in the Party of Lincoln. In fact, Black men — although the numbers are still comparatively small — have been coming around to parts of the Republican message.
But as much as Republicans claim they want Black people, they did very little to show it, whether in the policies they put forth or the seeming lack of effort, as evidenced by them pulling from among the worst of us to lead us.
While Warnock had people like Barack Obama campaigning for him, Walker trotted out the likes of Trump, Greene, Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham — none of whom have ever been accused of being a champion for Black interests.
Credit: Daniel Vernando for the AJC
Credit: Daniel Vernando for the AJC
During the campaign, I attended several Walker events. Aside from a Juneteenth event in DeKalb and a few roundtables, he generally avoided Black crowds. Instead, he generally appeared before largely white audiences in rural Georgia or exclusive white enclaves.
It was almost as if Walker, or his handlers, were willfully separating him from his Blackness. He refused to engage in talk about race, other than saying that we shouldn’t be talking about it.
“I am not a Republican but I respect everyone’s right to their point of view. Their selection of Herschel Walker insults me to my core,” said Markesha Henderson, a 46-year-old college athletics administrator who lives in Mableton. “There are plenty of viable Republicans that they could have put forward but they chose him in hopes to convert the fandom around his football success to votes. It is exploitative.”
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
On Monday, I phoned Garrison Douglas, the spokesman for the Republican National Committee of Georgia, who had a different take. Douglas said that Walker and the Republican Party had been beating the drum on issues impacting Black voters like inflation, rising crime and Black home-ownership rates.
“I wouldn’t say that he didn’t appeal to Black voters,” Douglas said. “As a party, we are heading in the right direction.”
In November, according to exit polls, about 90% of Black voters supported Warnock in the general election. Conversely, 70% of white Georgian voters preferred Walker. Going into Tuesday’s runoff, Walker was polling even worse among Black voters.
Ed Garnes, the founder of From Afros To Shelltoes and co-host of the acclaimed Black men and mental health podcast Reclamation Point, told me: “Hershel’s rise is predicated on historic stereotypes of Black men: athletic, absent fathers, unqualified, and a simpleton. Walker represents a sanitized version of Blackness that does not upset the system or threaten the fragility of white privilege. A vote for Warnock is conceding that Black men are talented, leaders, and anchored by an abiding faith. In the South, especially, we prefer our Black men meek and willing to culturally tap dance to the beat of white self-interest.”
This begs a few questions: What did white voters see in Walker that Black voters didn’t?
And what did white voters miss with Warnock?
I will start with Warnock. Growing up poor in Savannah — as his avalanche of ads reminded us — Warnock had to understand early the tenets of what he thought respectability should look like through a white gaze. As flawed as it might be.
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
We all learned it.
Stay out of trouble. Go to school. Go to church. Keep yourself clean and neat. Speak well. Be exceptional. For the most part, Warnock — like Obama before him and Republican Senator Tim Scott in South Carolina — achieved that.
He attended Morehouse, one of the finest Black colleges in America, took over a legendary Black church once helmed by Martin Luther King Jr., and managed to get elected to Congress in 2020.
Black people saw that as success and awarded him their votes.
Now, to the Walker question.
Except on the football field he never had to be exceptional. He just had to be Herschel.
In many ways, Walker made his white supporters feel good. His exploits at the University of Georgia, where he won a Heisman and led the Bulldogs to a national championship, represent nostalgia and a reminder of a time, dare I say, when Georgia was “great.”
Because he dove over offensive lines into the end zone with such grace, the party of family values easily ignored his history of family violence.
The party that fought for decades to overturn Roe could justify the fact that Walker allegedly paid for his former girlfriend to abort their baby — despite campaigning against abortions with no exceptions — as a bygone discretion from a repentant man who now knows right from wrong.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Douglas, of the Republican Party, said coverage of allegations against Walker was unbalanced.
“That has had a massive impact,” Douglas told me, stressing a Republican narrative that Warnock is a slum lord who hasn’t supported his children either.
To many, though, Walker presented himself on the campaign trail as a demonstrably flawed candidate with a thin grasp on policy issues.
Some white voters seemed to love it.
Black voters saw it for what it was.
A mess.
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