Hershel Walker’s Senate campaign is assessing the damage from the extremely well-documented report that he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009 and his son Christian’s subsequent strong condemnations of him. Prominent Republicans from Donald Trump on down are standing by Walker, but the real question is what Georgia voters will think. Walker narrowly trails Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in recent polls, so something that moves even a small number of voters could be significant.
“We’re going to need a few days to assess how this turns out,” an unnamed “senior GOP strategist” told CNN.
Walker’s campaign is reportedly clinging to the memory of Trump’s 2016 Access Hollywood tape, which didn’t end his chances despite his “grab ‘em by the pussy” brag. “Trump still made it to the White House,” Walker’s campaign manager, Scott Paradise, reportedly told staff, alluding to that tape. Paradise subsequently denied saying that, but he’s the manager of a notoriously untruthful campaign.
RELATED STORY: Herschel Walker’s son blasts his dad over abortion denials, lies, and domestic violence
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Paradise is also the manager of a campaign that, Politico reports, passed up on the chance to get ahead of the story of Walker having paid for girlfriends’ abortions in the past. It was apparently no big secret in Georgia, but Walker’s campaign opted to go with a cross-your-fingers-it-doesn’t-get-out strategy.
“It was, ‘Eh, it’s not going to come out, you’re being hyperbolic,’” a Georgia Republican operative told Politico. “The reaction was not, ‘They’re not going to say that because it never happened.’ It was like everything else, ‘Eh, people aren’t going to find out.’”
And the campaign stuck to that strategy even after a series of secret children became public over the summer. To be sure, Walker and his campaign probably couldn’t have foreseen his ex-girlfriend having kept the literal receipts, so they may have thought that if the story came out, brazening it out with a flat denial would be a more plausible response. Going with the flat denial despite the receipts, though? That’s … a special level of competence, and a sign of total disrespect for voters.
“You’ve conceded holding a gun to your wife’s head, and stalking women outside a window, and almost killing a man during road rage,” that Georgia Republican operative said. “This is what you choose not to concede on when there is overwhelming evidence that this happened?”
Yeah, pretty much.
Republican base voters have made clear that they don’t care if their candidates do the things they supposedly oppose. It’s not actually about banning abortion, it’s about Republican men controlling women’s bodies. But the story remains potentially damaging to Walker’s chances in two big ways: First, his son Christian—the one whose existence he acknowledged all along—has torn into him in ways that may give more voters pause.
“Family values, people? He has four kids, four different women, wasn’t in the house raising one of them,” Christian Walker said in an Instagram video. “I was silent after lie after lie after lie … We were told at the beginning of this he was going to get ahead of his past, hold himself accountable. That would have been fine, go ahead. He didn’t do any of that.”
There may be voters who would dismiss Herschel Walker having paid for a girlfriend to get an abortion more than a decade ago who will not dismiss Walker’s son calling his father out as an abuser and liar and absent father.
Second, abortion is a key issue this year following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which allowed many states, including Georgia, to put harsh new abortion bans in place. Abortion is mobilizing Democratic voters and a significant number of swing voters. Anything that increases the attention to the issue in relation to a specific campaign is probably good for Democrats, and reminding persuadable voters that Walker has taken advantage of the right that he is now actively trying to deny everyone else might just have an effect. And in a close race, anything that moves even a few votes can be a big deal.
One remaining question is whether more women will come forward to say Walker paid for their abortions. After all, the revelation that he had a secret son seemed shocking when it first came out—but it was followed by two more secret children.
Walker and the entire Republican Party are going to push forward. But once again voters have a chance to see who they are, and it’s not pretty.
There are thousands of elections on the ballot this year, and Democratic campaigns all over the country need your help to get out the vote. Mobilize is your one-stop shop to get connected with campaigns anywhere in the country that need volunteers to call, text, write, and knock on doors. Click here to view GOTV opportunities near you.
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“We’re going to need a few days to assess how this turns out,” an unnamed “senior GOP strategist” told CNN.
Walker’s campaign is reportedly clinging to the memory of Trump’s 2016 Access Hollywood tape, which didn’t end his chances despite his “grab ‘em by the pussy” brag. “Trump still made it to the White House,” Walker’s campaign manager, Scott Paradise, reportedly told staff, alluding to that tape. Paradise subsequently denied saying that, but he’s the manager of a notoriously untruthful campaign.
RELATED STORY: Herschel Walker’s son blasts his dad over abortion denials, lies, and domestic violence
Campaign Action
Paradise is also the manager of a campaign that, Politico reports, passed up on the chance to get ahead of the story of Walker having paid for girlfriends’ abortions in the past. It was apparently no big secret in Georgia, but Walker’s campaign opted to go with a cross-your-fingers-it-doesn’t-get-out strategy.
“It was, ‘Eh, it’s not going to come out, you’re being hyperbolic,’” a Georgia Republican operative told Politico. “The reaction was not, ‘They’re not going to say that because it never happened.’ It was like everything else, ‘Eh, people aren’t going to find out.’”
And the campaign stuck to that strategy even after a series of secret children became public over the summer. To be sure, Walker and his campaign probably couldn’t have foreseen his ex-girlfriend having kept the literal receipts, so they may have thought that if the story came out, brazening it out with a flat denial would be a more plausible response. Going with the flat denial despite the receipts, though? That’s … a special level of competence, and a sign of total disrespect for voters.
“You’ve conceded holding a gun to your wife’s head, and stalking women outside a window, and almost killing a man during road rage,” that Georgia Republican operative said. “This is what you choose not to concede on when there is overwhelming evidence that this happened?”
Yeah, pretty much.
Republican base voters have made clear that they don’t care if their candidates do the things they supposedly oppose. It’s not actually about banning abortion, it’s about Republican men controlling women’s bodies. But the story remains potentially damaging to Walker’s chances in two big ways: First, his son Christian—the one whose existence he acknowledged all along—has torn into him in ways that may give more voters pause.
“Family values, people? He has four kids, four different women, wasn’t in the house raising one of them,” Christian Walker said in an Instagram video. “I was silent after lie after lie after lie … We were told at the beginning of this he was going to get ahead of his past, hold himself accountable. That would have been fine, go ahead. He didn’t do any of that.”
There may be voters who would dismiss Herschel Walker having paid for a girlfriend to get an abortion more than a decade ago who will not dismiss Walker’s son calling his father out as an abuser and liar and absent father.
Second, abortion is a key issue this year following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which allowed many states, including Georgia, to put harsh new abortion bans in place. Abortion is mobilizing Democratic voters and a significant number of swing voters. Anything that increases the attention to the issue in relation to a specific campaign is probably good for Democrats, and reminding persuadable voters that Walker has taken advantage of the right that he is now actively trying to deny everyone else might just have an effect. And in a close race, anything that moves even a few votes can be a big deal.
One remaining question is whether more women will come forward to say Walker paid for their abortions. After all, the revelation that he had a secret son seemed shocking when it first came out—but it was followed by two more secret children.
Walker and the entire Republican Party are going to push forward. But once again voters have a chance to see who they are, and it’s not pretty.
There are thousands of elections on the ballot this year, and Democratic campaigns all over the country need your help to get out the vote. Mobilize is your one-stop shop to get connected with campaigns anywhere in the country that need volunteers to call, text, write, and knock on doors. Click here to view GOTV opportunities near you.
RELATED STORIES:
The Herschel Walker abortion story again shows that Republicanism stands for nothing at all
As midterms loom, Herschel Walker's hometown voters say he's 'not part of the Black community'