Herschel Walker is pushing away voters the way he once did tacklers
Editor's note: This column has been updated to correct the spelling of Latham Saddler's name.
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Just over 800,000 Georgians voted for Herschel Walker in the U.S. Senate Republican primary.
Many are now feeling voter’s remorse. Those who aren’t — and don’t count themselves among the conspiracy theorists and Trump zealots — ought to be.
More on Herschel Walker's Senate run: Despite increased partisanship, Herschel Walker's weaknesses may lead to split tickets
If retaking the Senate majority is the rationale for nominating the lying, bumbling, dimwitted Walker, his voters grossly miscalculated. Walker’s status as a football icon won’t be enough to offset his dumbfounding ignorance and bizarre public comments. Walker is losing support with swing voters every time he opens his mouth to speak about climate change, gun rights, Juneteenth, abortion, the number of children he’s fathered … and on and on.
If the election were today, Walker would lose to Sen. Raphael Warnock by several percentage points. Five months from now, the gap could be bigger than those Walker once ran through behind the Georgia Bulldogs offensive line.
Republicans would have been better served picking one of the other GOP candidates. They had three good ones to choose from: Gary Black, a longtime statewide office holder; and decorated military veterans Kelvin King and Latham Saddler.
All three have high campaign marketing ceilings, especially King and Saddler. Building name recognition for an Air Force Academy grad and successful entrepreneur (King) or a former Navy SEAL (Saddler) would have allowed the campaigns to control the narratives.
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Walker’s brand, while instantly recognizable, has proven a curse. Instead of introducing and defining the candidate and his platform, the Walker campaign spends its time shielding him from all but the true believers and spinning his nonsensical comments, policy positions and lies.
Walker recently brought on several new campaign pros, most notably strategist Chip Lake. But Walker is beyond help. His handlers can’t continue to hide him away.
The decision to remove the media from a recent campaign event held in a public park — and then to blame the organizers, who called their bluff — was unwise. More campaign stop hosts will insist on livestreaming his appearances, as an Atlanta-area GOP group did and where the world heard his hot air about “bad air” and how it moves around the Earth.
The next five months will be excruciatingly long for Walker primary voters. The story come Nov. 8 won’t be Georgia helping the GOP win back the Senate, but of a missed opportunity.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Herschel Walker run for U.S. Senate as a Georgia Republican is folly
