Georgia Senate hopeful Herschel Walker’s campaign has faced a lot of hurdles leading up to Tuesday’s runoff election.
The football legend’s past has come back to haunt him, and his character has been called into question multiple times.
The scandal-plagued candidate has been mocked mercilessly on Saturday Night Live, and his many missteps have been fodder for late-night comedy hosts. Here are the top five controversies that have dogged the political newcomer’s ambitious Senate run.
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Abortion
The political newcomer centered his campaign on a strict no-abortion platform, even in the case of rape and incest. However, two women whom the former football player has been romantically linked to claimed Walker pressured and paid for them to have abortions.
On Oct. 3, 2022, the Daily Beast published a bombshell report about Walker’s ex-girlfriend, who claimed the Heisman Trophy winner paid her $700 to get an abortion in 2009. The woman provided receipts and a check from Walker for the procedure, as well as a handwritten get-well card. Walker initially denied knowing the woman, calling the allegations a “hatchet job from a Democratic activist.”
Four days later, the woman told the New York Times that he urged her to have a second abortion in 2011, which she refused to do, giving birth to one of Walker’s four children.
A month later, a second woman came forward who claimed she met Walker in the 1980s and allegedly began a romantic relationship with him, following him to Dallas when he was traded to the Cowboys in November 1987. In April 1993, the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, found out that she was pregnant. She wanted to keep the child but claimed Walker pressured her to have an abortion, drove her to the procedure, sat in the parking lot until it was finished, and then took her to get her post-procedure medication. Walker also denied the claims and that he knew the second woman, who provided pictures, diary entries, handwritten cards, letters, and voicemails that were apparently between the two.
The second woman said that “after discussing the pregnancy with Herschel several times, he encouraged me to have an abortion and gave me the money to do so.”
She added that she saw Walker state that the first woman’s claims “were not true because he never signed any cards using the letter ‘H.’ I knew that was not true because he had often signed letters to me using ‘H,'” she said.
Children
Walker has pitched himself as a family man while simultaneously chiding black men who have abandoned their children.
He has spoken lovingly about his son Christian, a conservative commentator. However, it turns out that Walker had three other children he didn’t mention by other women. Christian Walker also made headlines after he blasted his father, calling him a liar and a hypocrite.
“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability,” he said. “But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other people’s lives. How dare you,” the younger Walker wrote in a series of tweets.
He added that “every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office because we all knew (some of) his past.”
Christian Walker said his father “decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it.”
The elder Walker responded by saying he loved his son, even though he was misguided.
Taxes
Walker has called Georgia home. It’s where he was born, raised, and played as a college athlete. Then he moved and, until recently, lived in Texas.
A few days before declaring his candidacy for the Senate, he moved to Georgia, the state where he is registered to vote.
The problem is that the football legend reportedly claimed on his 2021 and 2022 taxes that he lived in Texas and took advantage of a homestead tax designed for residents.
While authorities have been asked to investigate the matter, it has not disqualified him from running for Senate.
At most, it handed more ammunition to Democrats who claim that Walker moved back only at the behest of former President Donald Trump to unseat Warnock.
Law enforcement
Walker has been accused of stretching the truth at times.
One of his more egregious moments came when he brought a plastic “prop” police badge to his one and only debate against Warnock in Savannah, Georgia, on Oct. 14, 2022.
Walker claimed he attended training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, in 1989. There is no evidence that he ever worked with the agency, but it has not stopped him from repeating the claim.
During the Savannah debate, Warnock said that, unlike Walker, he has “never pretended to be a police officer,” which prompted Walker to pull out a “prop badge.”
He was admonished by the moderator, who said “props” were not allowed on the debate stage.
Instead of admitting fault, Walker’s campaign held fast to the claim, telling NBC News that it had ordered 1,000 plastic law enforcement badges with the phrase “I’m with Herschel.” The campaign planned to use them as a fundraising tool because he supported law enforcement.
Education
Walker is most widely known to Georgians for his standout performance as a University of Georgia football player-turned-NFL star.
Walker has credited his success and work ethic to the discipline he learned at the Athens-based school.
He has also claimed that he graduated from the state university in the top 1% of his class.
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It turns out that Walker never graduated from the university and, in fact, went pro in his junior year. When reporters pushed back on his false claims, he said he has never once said he graduated though multiple reports show him saying just that.
