Big-name Republicans are holding back rather than jumping to launch 2022 challenges to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Former President Donald Trump urging former football player Herschel Walker to run combined with Georgia Republicans evaluating which strategies could work to win the state in 2022 explain the calm before the storm.
Warnock’s 2022 election bid will be less than two years after joining the Senate as a result of a special election, and the race is set to be one of the biggest Senate battlegrounds of the midterm elections.
Yet, two of the biggest names in Georgia Republican politics have ruled out challenging Warnock. Former Republican Sen. David Purdue, despite having millions left over in his war chest from his race against Sen. Jon Ossoff, said he would not seek the seat, calling it a personal decision. Former Rep. Doug Collins, who lost a primary challenge to former Sen. Kelly Loeffler in 2020, also opted out of running this week.
Loeffler, whom Warnock defeated to win his seat, is keeping the option of running for Senate again in a rematch open, but she is not rushing to launch.
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Many observers point to Trump encouraging Walker to run for the Georgia seat, saying that is freezing the field and having a chilling effect on the other potential candidates. Walker, who played college football for the University of Georgia, now lives in Texas and would have to move back to the Peach State to run — but he has reportedly expressed a private interest in running.
“There are people kicking the tires on it, but they’re just not going to do so publicly until they really get a sense of what Herschel is going to do,” said one Republican operative who was involved in January’s runoff elections.
Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter has said that if Walker decides not to run, he will likely launch a Senate bid.
But the situation is more complicated than Walker, who has never run for office before and may not be as much of a field-clearing candidate as he seems right now.
“I do think there’s a little bit of a wait and see with Herschel, but it’s certainly not an end-all-be-all,” said Stephen Lawson, another Republican strategist in Georgia. “There are multiple variables playing out across the political landscape here — it’s not just one thing. I think the impact of President Trump has a lot to do with the dynamics going on here. The impact of what Stacey Abrams has done to make this stay competitive has a lot of impact. The recent election integrity legislation, which is a positive development, is having an impact.”
A key challenge for Georgia Republicans is rebuilding confidence in the electoral system among their voter base, with the recently passed voting bill being one aspect of that. Hundreds of thousands of reliable Republican voters stayed home during the Jan. 5 runoff election, contributing to wins for Ossoff and Warnock and shifting control of the Senate to the Democrats. Many voters told reporters that they would not vote because they did not trust the system, fueled by Trump’s claims of fraud and unfair practices.
Another factor is evaluating the mood of the now purple-state electorate and their opinion of Warnock during his first months in office. Would a candidate who energizes the base or can appeal to be better-suited to win?
“There’s some residual shell shock over what happened in January,” the other Republican operative said.
Another explanation for little movement from big names is that the election cycle there ended just four months ago, rather than six like in the rest of the country.
“We were just in full out campaign mode in January, and so, we’re on a bit of a different, perhaps more delayed timeline down here,” Lawson said.
Ossoff did not launch his Senate bid until September 2019, demonstrating that candidates may not need to rush to get in the race before Labor Day.
Loeffler, one of the bigger Georgia names who may run, already has high name recognition across Georgia, a fundraising network, and the ability to contribute to her own campaign, so she does not necessarily need the extra few months of 2021 to build that campaign infrastructure. And she is staying relevant in the state by starting the nonprofit Greater Georgia Project activist group and calling for an investigation into Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
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Two lesser-name Republican candidates who would need to spend much more time and money to boost name recognition have launched Senate bids: Navy veteran Latham Saddler and businessman Kelvin King.
