(New York) Will Herschel Walker, Republican candidate for the Georgia senatorial election, do the trick of Donald Trump again, that is to say survive a scandal that should have ended his chances of being elected ?
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
On Monday night, the Daily Beast news site published a sensational allegation: In September 2009, the soccer legend gave his girlfriend $700 to have an abortion. The author of this “exclusive” did not identify the woman, but did mention a check in her name signed by Walker, a receipt from an abortion clinic, a get well card signed by Walker and testimony corroborating the story.
The unnamed woman claims Walker encouraged her to terminate her pregnancy, saying the timing was not right for the birth of a baby.
The allegation is all the more explosive because Walker is opposed to abortion in all cases, without exception for rape, incest or a threat to the life of the mother.
She comes in the home stretch of a tight race that could determine which party will control the Senate after the midterm elections on November 8.
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King preached, defends the seat at stake in this election in Georgia.
Disturbing words from his son
During Monday evening, Walker, a political neophyte recruited by Donald Trump, denied the Daily Beast allegations and threatened to sue the site for defamation.
“This is an outright lie and I deny it in the strongest terms possible,” he said in a statement.
But he was not at the end of his troubles. After her denial, her adult son Christian Walker tweeted a series of disturbing tweets, including accusing his father of threatening to kill family members.
“You weren’t a ‘family man’ when you abandoned us to bang a bunch of women, when you threatened to kill us, and when you forced us to move six times in six months to escape your violence,” he wrote in one of his tweets.
Christian Walker returned to the charge on Tuesday morning after being accused by defenders of his father of behaving like a spoiled child.
“He has four kids, four different wives, he wasn’t home raising one,” the digital influencer teased in a video. “You have no idea what my mother and I went through. »
Christian Walker’s mother, Cindy DeAngelis Grossman, has previously accused Herschel Walker of pointing a gun to his head and threatening to “blow his brains out”.
Herschel Walker attributed this and other incidents of domestic violence to multiple personality disorder, which he says he overcame.
Monument of unshakable football?
Can the Republican candidate survive the new allegations against him?
“I would say for most candidates in most races, that’s the kind of thing that would end their chances,” he said. The Press Alan Abramowitz, political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. “But I’m a bit reluctant to say that in this case, because we’ve already seen that he was able to survive all sorts of allegations, including blatant lies about his personal history. We have to wait and see. That said, the abortion claims would be very damaging if they hold water. »
PHOTOBILL BARROW, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Herschel Walker speaking to supporters, in Emerson, in September 2021
For the time being, Herschel Walker retains his support among the national conservatives. Georgia native, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich said the Republican candidate was the target of “the most vicious campaign” of 2022.
“We have seen this film before,” said Ralph Reed, an influential figure among evangelical Christians, referring to the October 2016 broadcast of a recording in which Donald Trump boasted that he could do anything with women. , including “grab them by the pussy”.
“They’re trying to bring down a good man,” Reed added.
In recent months, the media has demonstrated that Walker lied about his exact number of children, his educational background, his business record and his work with law enforcement, among other things.
But his exploits as a running back for the University of Georgia Bulldogs made him a football god in a state where the sport is a religion. He notably led his team to an NCAA championship in 1980.
As a candidate, he is no more popular with black voters in Georgia than any other Republican candidate. But white voters, especially the more conservative ones, seem to be ready to forgive him for everything.
It remains to be seen whether this includes the termination of a pregnancy, provided that it is confirmed. In the meantime, Senator Warnock enjoys a tiny 0.7 percentage point lead over Walker, according to the Real Clear Politics site’s poll average.