Football legend Herschel Walker may be a political newcomer, but he has passed his first test in the Georgia Senate race: refusing to turn the 2022 midterm elections into a Republican civil war.
Walker refused to jump on board the effort to defeat Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in the GOP primary after Kemp drew the ire of former President Donald Trump and his allies for not trying to rig the Georgia election in his favor. After taking a picture with Kemp challenger Vernon Jones, which Jones then used to suggest Walker was backing his campaign, Walker’s campaign said that he is focused on his Senate race and that he “is not getting involved in any other races this cycle.”
It is crucial that Republicans take back the Senate in 2022. With a 50-50 Senate, the GOP is defending three vulnerable seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. While pickup opportunities may be closer than they appear in Nevada, New Hampshire, and potentially even Colorado, there are two major races that Republicans must win: Arizona and Georgia.
Republicans are in this position only because Trump and his allies decided they cared more about his ego than they did about letting Democrats seize unified control of the federal government. Republicans could have begun the Biden presidency with a 52-48 Senate majority, with Republican Leader Mitch McConnell serving as a reliable check on Biden’s awful nominations and reckless spending policies. Instead, Trump attacked Georgia Republicans more than he did the Democratic candidates for Senate, and his supporters stayed home while Democrats swept the Senate runoffs.
By refusing to take up this fight, Walker proves that he is a team player and that keeping Democrats out of positions of power is more important than settling stupid personal feuds. If Georgia Republicans decide to declare war on Kemp, they will make rabble-rousing Democrat Stacey Abrams the governor. If Walker were to join that fight, he would make retaking the Senate that much more difficult.
Georgia Republicans should be focused on preventing a conspiracy theorist in Abrams from running the state and on ending Democrat Raphael Warnock’s brief time as a senator. That means that candidates can’t let themselves fall into the intraparty fights that agitators want to push. It is only the bare minimum, but Walker has shown that he is going to treat this campaign seriously.
