Herschel Junior Walker (born March 3, 1962) is a politician and former NFL running back for the American football team.
In 1982, when Walker was a junior at the University of Georgia, he was named the college football season’s most outstanding player thanks to his outstanding performance on the field.
Walker began his NFL career in 1986 with the Dallas Cowboys, and he was named to the Pro Bowl and the All-Pro second team in back-to-back years (1987 and 1988).
Walker joined the Vikings of Minnesota after being traded there in 1989. Later in his career, he played for the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants before finishing with a second stint with the Cowboys. During the 1999 ceremony, Walker was honoured by being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
His tenure on President Trump’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition lasted from 2018 until 2020.
In the senate race in Georgia in 2022, he will be opposing the incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock, as the Republican nominee.
Hershel Walker Controversy
Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Georgia and a staunch opponent of abortion rights, was claimed by The Daily Beast to have paid for his then-girlfriend to get an abortion in 2009. This news broke on Monday night.
A seat that might determine control of the Senate is presently a dead heat between Walker and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. FiveThirtyEight predicts that Georgia will be the state that decides whether the Republicans or the Democrats will have a majority in the House after the midterm elections.
This is how important it is: We estimate that the Republicans have a 60 percent probability of taking control of the Senate if they win Georgia. We estimate the Democrats’ odds of taking the chamber to 89 out of 100 if they carry the state.
However, the question is to what extent Herschel Walker will be harmed by this debate. The lurid nature of the article and the chaos it has purportedly caused in his campaign lead to the tempting conclusion that it could destroy his chances. Still, that can hardly be considered a guarantee.
Scandals do have a real and noticeable impact on a candidate’s chances of becoming elected. I maintain a scandal database, and in 2018 we found that scandal-plagued incumbents did 9 percentage points worse than they would have otherwise been forecast to do in their next general election.
This evaluation took into account a wide range of data, such as the candidate’s track record in past elections, the political makeup of their district, generic ballot polls, approval ratings for the incumbent’s performance in Congress, and the incumbent’s approval ratings among constituents.
Based on these results, we have added the possibility of a candidate being involved in a scandal to our midterm prediction model.
Even though Walker has rejected the claim, this fresh information has not changed our opinion on the Georgia Senate race. Why? Because, for starters, it doesn’t qualify as a scandal in our eyes. According to our analysis, a scandal is an allegation of serious wrongdoing that may be verified by objective means.
The abortion Walker paid for was not illegal, but it was hypocritical. And if hypocrisy alone were grounds for a “scandal-tarred” moniker, then virtually every politician would have one.
Also, the controversy quotient has been added to Walker’s rating. His campaign has been plagued by many scandals that fit our criteria, both before and throughout it.
In 2005, a protective order was issued against Walker after his ex-wife filed a complaint alleging that he had threatened to murder her.
Both he and his business partner were sued for 5,000 in unpaid loans.
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His opponents on the left have charged him with several campaign funding breaches. The Daily Beast also reported in June that Walker has three children he had never publicly acknowledged.
Our projection is currently only slightly influenced by the scandal variable. The “fundamentals,” which are things like scandals, Georgia’s partisan lean, Warnock’s incumbency, and contender funding, account for only 6% of Deluxe’s Georgia Senate prediction.
That’s because Georgia is one of the most-polled states in the country. And because we have so many polls and Election Day is so close, about 60% of the prediction is based on survey data.
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And, given the timeliness of the topic, it seems to reason that none of these polls factor in Walker’s abortion controversy.
The negative coverage Walker is getting could hurt his popularity. Already, Walker’s adult son Christian, a conservative social media personality, has posted negative tweets and videos about the candidate, which might keep Walker’s ugly personal life in the spotlight.
And it doesn’t take a 9-point decline in the polls for this to matter: Our polling average shows that Warnock is now two points ahead of Walker, so even if the scandal doesn’t kill Walker, it might still be bad news for the Republican if it keeps him from making gains.
On the other side, Walker may not have many supporters left to flip. Ads by the Democrats have been airing for weeks, reminding voters of Walker’s troubles.
Also, there aren’t many undecided voters in Georgia, making it an extremely inelastic state. In addition, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has promised to keep up its intensive campaigning in the Peach State.
It’s possible that many Republican and Republican-leaning voters in Georgia will disregard this latest claim because there is simply too much at stake to let it affect their vote.
As we noted in our 2018 article, partisanship is often more important than controversy.
The public’s reaction to this tale is unknown at this time; we will have to wait and watch. For the next few weeks, you can be sure that we will be paying special attention to the polling results in Georgia.
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Personal Life
Walker married Cindy DeAngelis Grossman back in 1983. They met in college, fell in love, and now have a son. After 19 years of marriage, the couple split up in 2002.
His relationship with Julie M. Blanchard began in 2010. They’re engaged and are living in Westlake, Texas. Blanchard was formerly an executive at ESPN.
Walker has always identified as a Republican and is widely known for his involvement in politics. When Jack Kingston was running for the Senate in 2014, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce funded an ad featuring him.
Furthermore, he has openly backed candidates including U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, and President Donald Trump. President Trump selected Walked to serve as the Council’s co-chair for sports, fitness, and nutrition in 2019.