With barely a month to go, the Senate race in Georgia between Herschel Walker and Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock is attracting some of the closest scrutiny. It’s not impossible for the GOP to take back the Senate majority without flipping Warnock’s seat, but it would be far, far easier if it could be done. And yet, despite the Democrats having to deal with Joe Biden’s horrible approval numbers and the unpopularity of their woke agenda, Walker has continued to struggle in the polls. Over at Yahoo News, one possible explanation is offered. For a famous Black athlete that remains something of a legend in the state, Walker isn’t attracting very much of the Black vote in current polling. And according to the linked report, this isn’t something new. They claim that Herschel Walker has a long history of not feeling like a member of the Black community and most of his support is actually coming from white voters.
“All those campaign materials were in the white community,” said Curtis Dixon, who is Black and who taught and coached Walker, a Republican, in the late 1970s when he was a high school football prodigy. “The only other house that has a Herschel Walker poster is his family.”
It may not be an exaggeration. In a predominantly Black neighborhood of small homes about a block from where Walker went to high school, nine people, including a man who said he was Walker’s cousin, gathered on a steamy Saturday in July to eat and talk in the shade.
No one planned to vote for Walker. Most scoffed at the thought.
One of the women who live in Walker’s hometown explained that Herschel isn’t getting the Black vote because “he forgot where he came from. He’s not part of the Black community.”
Perhaps there is some of that involved in Walker’s poor polling among Black voters, but that seems like a rather long bow to draw in terms of an explanation. One easier explanation might be that Raphael Warnock is also Black, so neither man should have a built-in advantage. Of course, that’s a rather racist view for the authors of that report to take because it assumes that Black voters will base their choices on race instead of the relative merits of the candidates. Then again, we should probably expect that from the media these days.
There’s also the fact that nearly three-quarters of Black voters in Georgia are registered Democrats. Walker is running as a Republican. And as the article points out, he’s a Republican with an endorsement of the Bad Orange Man, so that makes two strikes against him right out of the gate.
On top of all of that, if we’re being honest we need to admit that Walker was not properly vetted and he has made more than his fair share of rookie mistakes. His attempts to avoid debating at nearly all costs haven’t helped him much either. He passed on the opportunity to let people get to know him better that way and possibly win over some support in his own hometown.
Given all of that, it’s rather amazing that the race is still as close as it is. The RCP average shows Walker trailing Warnock by less than one percent, 47.0 to 46.3. But that average goes back well into August. The three most recent reputable polls all show Walker trailing by two to four points. That’s still close, but it’s not a toss-up.
Time is growing short for Herschel Walker to figure out a way to break through and make it over the finish line. And I don’t think there is a magic solution to be found in terms of building his support specifically among Black voters. He needs to be hammering the issues people care about, including crime rates and the cost of living. Personally, I wouldn’t bet one nickel on this race either way at the moment and I expect it to come down to a photo finish.
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