WARNER ROBINS, Georgia — There was no way a neck injury was going to sideline Faye Lacey from attending Herschel Walker’s campaign stop in Warner Robins, Georgia, on Friday.
Lacey, who wore a red shirt with Walker’s face on it and a neck brace with a “Run Herschel Run” sticker slapped in the middle, told the Washington Examiner that if the Republican Senate hopeful could show up for voters, she could show up for him.
“He’s a Georgia boy,” she said. “He’s going to stand up for us! Just watch!”
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Lacey was among 150 Georgians who had gathered in the parking lot of the Galleria Square to hear the football legend-turned-political candidate make his case to voters.
Walker is locked in a tight runoff race against incumbent Sen. Raphel Warnock (D-GA). Neither candidate had enough votes to secure an outright win during the general election and was forced into a Dec. 6 runoff. Friday was the final day of early voting in the race. A record 1.4 million voters have already cast their ballots, with wait times in some metropolitan areas exceeding two hours.
A CNN/SSRS poll released Friday gave Warnock the edge over Walker among likely voters, 52% to 48%, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
A win for Warnock would widen the number of seats Democrats control in the Senate to 51. If Walker wins, it would make things much tougher for President Joe Biden in the last two years of his first term, particularly when it comes to passing judicial nominations.
For Lacey, the choice is an easy one.
“I love Herschel Walker, and Georgia is his home,” she said, despite allegations that Walker claimed a Texas tax credit intended for residents of that state while running for office in Georgia.
Lucretia Mosley, 68, was also at the Walker event and had even bought a bright purple wig for the occasion.
“I wanted to wear red for Herschel, but this was the closest I could get,” she told the Washington Examiner. “I want him to know we support him here and that Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden have no place in Georgia.”
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Mosley was about to explain why her grandchildren think she’s “crazy for loving Herschel” but stopped midsentence when she spotted Walker’s red and black bus pull into the parking lot.
It was about the same time that two dogs dressed in “Run Herschel Run” sweaters began barking and jumping up and down.
The larger-than-life football star stepped off his bus midway through George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone,” and the crowd went wild.
Walker talked about playing football, his mother calling him “big-boned” as a child, his time on the Olympic bobsled team, and how God had hand-picked him to unseat Warnock. He circled back to a recycled joke about St. Peter and an elevator to hell and then compared Warnock’s debate performance in Savannah to Scooby-Doo. Walker hit on his hate for pronouns. He also claimed he was called a c***, a racial slang used to refer to an undignified black person but pivoted midsentence and said he was OK with it because the animal was smart. He then blamed Warnock for weaponizing racism and ended by declaring to an overwhelmingly white audience that racism didn’t exist.
What Walker didn’t talk about were the multiple scandals that have dogged his Senate campaign, including claims of domestic violence and allegations he pressured and paid for two women to get abortions even though he has campaigned on a strict anti-abortion platform. Walker has also been caught lying about his education, his ties to law enforcement, and the number of children he has while simultaneously slamming black men for abandoning their families.
To Lacey, it’s all a part of Walker’s folksy charm.
“I am a Christian, and I know he was a fallen away Christian like me and he got redeemed,” she said. “I know he had a lot of faults, but he asked for forgiveness and wrote a book about it.”
She added that she would not vote for Warnock because “he’s for abortion and up until the last moment.”
“I don’t know how you can be a man of God and be for abortion,” she added.
Supporter Clarence Edwin told the Washington Examiner he also liked that Walker is a “flawed human” and said he “deserves forgiveness because he sought salvation.”
Edwin, a retired teacher, also called Warnock, the senior pastor at the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, “an agent of Satan.”
Yvette Jossart said her biggest problem with Warnock was that he voted in lockstep with Biden.
“I’ve seen what Warnock has done in the last couple of years, and I am not happy,” she said. “He keeps voting with Joe Biden, which is a disaster.”
While Walker was wooing constituents in Warner Robins, Warnock spent his day in Savannah, leading about 100 supporters in a march from the Deliverance Prayer Tower to an early voting center.
“If you’ve already voted, spend all weekend calling the folks who haven’t voted or you don’t know if they voted,” said Warnock, who grew up in the projects of Savannah. “Call them — that’s your job.”
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It’s the same message former President Barack Obama spread Thursday night at a rally for Warnock in Atlanta.
“You have the power to determine the course of this country,” he said. “If voters here in Georgia had stayed home two years ago, Republicans would have kept control of the Senate, and they would have blocked every single piece of legislation that President Biden and Democrats passed.”
