In interviews with NR, GOP operatives expressed concern that Trump could swing the nomination to a flawed candidate.
As football legend Herschel Walker mulls a run against incumbent Democratic senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia, two long, intertwined shadows are being cast over the crucial 2022 contest that could determine control of the upper chamber.
The first belongs to former president Donald Trump, who not only remains the most influential figure in the party, but has been particularly active in Georgia. His insistence that voter fraud cost him the state in last November’s general election arguably cost the GOP both Senate seats in January’s run-offs.
The second is Walker’s. A towering figure and beloved former Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia, Walker is eyeing a run. If he were to declare, he would instantly become the undisputed front-runner to win the primary.
Georgia Republicans are worried about the ability of both unpredictable figures to determine the fates of declared candidates such as Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black and Trump-administration alum Latham Saddler, as well as the Senate majority leader prospects of Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell.
Trump and Walker have a long-running relationship dating back to Walker’s stint on Trump’s United States Football League team in the 1980s. In both 2016 and 2020, Walker openly supported Trump’s bids for the presidency, even delivering a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention during which he boasted a “deep, personal friendship” with Trump and analogized the president’s combative style to the way he used to run over opponents on the field. “That’s how you get the job done,” he explained.
In March, Trump returned the favor, asking in a statement, “Wouldn’t it be great if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia?
“He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL. He is also a GREAT person. Run, Herschel, Run!” Trump continued.
Then, in June, Trump joined Clay Travis and Buck Sexton’s radio show, where he all but announced Walker’s candidacy, saying “he told me he’s going to [run], and I think he will.” Walker, despite hinting at a run on Twitter, has yet to confirm this.
Wouldn’t it be great if he did, though? Many Republican insiders think not.
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Opposition research on Walker first surfaced from the Associated Press in mid-July in the form of “documents detail[ing] accusations that Walker repeatedly threatened his ex-wife’s life, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior.” The most notable and disturbing story is that of his ex-wife, who has alleged that Walker aimed a gun at her head and said “I’m going to blow your f’ing brains out.”
Erick Erickson, a prominent Georgia radio host and conservative pundit, reacted to the AP piece by pouring cold water on the idea that the damaging stories emerged because of partisan ugliness.
“Folks thinking the Democrats dropped that oppo research on Herschel Walker. HAHAHAHA. No. Nope. Wasn’t them,” he tweeted, instead implying that we were all bearing witness to Republican-on-Republican violence.
In interviews with National Review, a number of Erickson’s fellow Republican insiders confirmed that much of the Peach State’s political class is bearish on Walker.
“There is a growing sense that the Herschel Walker candidacy is a vanity project for President Trump and a gold-mining expedition for a few consultants,” worried one such senior Republican strategist. “The sentiment’s very pervasive that Herschel can’t win a general. He just can’t.”
It’s also their opinion that the situation is very much out of the hands of party insiders and strategists.
“Trump’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. . . . We’re all just kind of sitting here with this pit in our stomach like, ‘Is he really gonna go through with this?’ We all know about Trump’s infatuation with Georgia, and we all know his ability to engage with the primary electorate here. If he wraps his arms around Herschel Walker, it’s going to be really tough,” the strategist said.
The same operative also spoke to how Trump’s unfounded allegations of major voter fraud in the state were not only detrimental to the runoff campaigns of Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, but could be a poison pill for Georgia Republicans moving forward.
It is the impression of the GOP electorate that Democrats hold both of Georgia’s Senate seats because “Brian Kemp didn’t do enough about voter fraud.” The political class, meanwhile, maintains that “there’s no doubt” that it was Trump’s behavior that depressed diehard turnout and drove moderates toward the Democrats.
This divide between operatives’ and voters’ respective 2020 postmortems could result in the nomination of a less-electable Senate candidate such as Walker, but it also may hobble Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffesnperger as they attempt to hold on to their respective positions in tough reelection races.
Others are a bit more optimistic about a Walker candidacy and Republicans’ chances writ large, believing that Georgia Republicans are going to be motivated come Election Day 2022.
“We’re the only state, thankfully, that lost two Senate seats in one day,” lamented Chip Lake, Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan’s former chief of staff. “I feel very strongly that 2022 is shaping up to be a very good year for our party. Every piece of data that I’ve looked at shows that Americans of all political persuasions are concerned about the decreasing value of the dollar. They’re concerned about crime, and the Democratic Party has no realistic plan to deal with crime and to deal with inflation.”
Lake sees Walker as a high-risk, high-reward candidate.
“He has an incredible upside, but he also has a potential floor that could be problematic, too. . . . I do think a lot of people here are just getting a little anxious because they either want Herschel to make a decision that he’s getting into the race, or they want him to make a decision that he’s not getting in.”
Every day that the GOP field remains in flux, Lake points out, incumbent Warnock gets stronger.
If Walker does jump in, though, Lake concurs that he’s likely to get the former president’s endorsement and the nomination, though he also submits that Walker would face the challenge of “introducing himself to the electorate” as a serious political figure, rather than an athlete.
Two strategists working with other GOP Senate campaigns were, as expected, more blunt.
“I think there’s been a lot of trepidation about another untested candidate,” said one, who compared a prospective Walker campaign with that of Kelly Loeffler’s failed 2020 effort. “Nobody knows what his positions are on things. This pre-announcement period has been a disaster, and folks are worried he’s going to crater and leave the Senate in Democratic control. So there’s quite a bit of hesitancy, I think, throughout the state and also in D.C.”
“The obvious concerns are there,” said another, making reference to Walker’s past actions and his dissociative personality disorder. “His opening day is his high-water mark.”
“Republicans have got to be smart; they cannot just nominate anybody. They don’t have an organic majority here anymore. They gotta have a better candidate,” he continued.
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In the end, it may all come back down to Trump — a frightening fact of life that Georgia GOP operatives are getting used to.
While the former president’s influence over the party may be waning somewhat — Trump-endorsed candidates have not been cruising to victory in primary battles the way they once did — he remains powerful. Especially in Georgia, where the sting of a string of losses has left both voters and Trump bitter, and potentially as eager to draw blood from the GOP establishment as they are from Democrats.
Foisting Walker upon them might be just the way to do that. And according to Erickson, that may be exactly what he’s trying to do.
“I get the sense that it’s way more Team Trump trying to get Herschel into the race than Herschel — they definitely pushed the idea. I think it’s something he certainly was interested in, from what I gather. But it was definitely the Trump team trying to find someone who could be their guy, and President Trump is biased toward Herschel.”
Because the whole thing is Trump’s brainchild, though, Erickson says he’s not so sure that Walker will end up throwing his hat in the ring.
“I think that Associated Press report that came out highlighted some of the baggage he would bring to the table, and it would all be fair game. . . . I don’t know that he wants that,” Erickson said.
“In fact, I’ve talked to a number of people close to him who he had reached out to try to help him with his campaign and to a person that he’s stopped returning their phone calls. I’ve also talked to somebody in the Trump orbit who’s told me he’s stopped taking those phone calls as well,” he added.
Republicans no longer have any illusions about Warnock’s prowess on the campaign trail. Some saw him as a weak candidate in 2020; they have been disabused of that misconception. One person working on a GOP campaign readily conceded that the Democrat was a “talented politician, a gifted orator, and someone who will have unlimited funds.”
Even in what should be a favorable cycle, few believe that Republicans are assured the Georgia seat, the governor’s mansion, or a majority in the Senate.
It is quite possible that Donald Trump’s and Herschel Walker’s choices in Georgia could be decisive in determining the fates of all three.