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Herschel Walker pitches himself as a politician who can bridge America’s racial and cultural divides because he loves everyone and overlooks differences.
“I don’t care what color you are,” Georgia’s Republican Senate nominee, who is Black, told an overwhelmingly white crowd recently in Bartow County, north of Atlanta. “This is a good place,” Walker said of the United States, “and a way we make it better is by coming together.”
Yet the former University of Georgia football star who calls all Georgians “my family” has staked out familiar conservative ground on America’s most glaring societal fissures, seemingly contradicting his promises of unity. Walker says those who don’t share his vision of the country can leave, and he blasts his opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and the Democratic Party as the real purveyors of division. Their “wokeness” on race, transgender rights and other issues, Walker insists, threatens U.S. power and identity.
“Senator Warnock believes America is a bad country full of racist people,” Walker says in one ad, a claim based on Warnock, who is also Black, acknowledging institutional racism during his sermons as a Baptist minister. “I believe we’re a great country full of generous people,” Walker concludes.
That approach isn’t surprising in a state controlled for most of its history by white cultural conservatives, and it aligns Walker with many high-profile Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But Walker’s arguments make for a striking contrast in a Senate contest featuring two Black men born in the Deep South during or immediately following the civil rights movement.
Such developments would typically sink a Republican candidate, but Walker is betting the conservative ground he’s staked out throughout the campaign will ultimately win over voters who are singularly interested in flipping a Democratic seat and retaking the Senate majority.
His advisers believe Walker’s rhetoric reflects the views of many Georgians, at least most who will vote this fall. Most specifically, it’s an appeal to whites, including moderates who may be wary of the first-time candidate yet believe Democrats push too much social change. The outcome could turn on how Walker’s pitch lands in an electorate that’s gotten younger, more urban, less white and less native to Georgia since Walker, 60, and Warnock, 53, grew up in the state.
Mark Rountree, a Republican pollster, said a narrow but solid majority of Georgia voters “responds favorably to Republican messaging broadly,” including socially conservative rhetoric.
“I don’t know that they all use that ‘wokeness’ terminology but they’re not completely happy with all the cultural changes that have gone on in America,” he said, stressing that group includes metro Atlanta white voters who helped President Joe Biden win Georgia in 2020.
Warnock, as minister of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, has long linked the civil rights leader’s vision of a “beloved community” to 21st century discussions of diversity and justice, including religious pluralism, LGBTQ rights, ballot access, racial equity, law enforcement and other issues.
