COLUMBUS, Georgia — About 150 Georgians huddled together in the back of a Piggly Wiggly parking lot in Columbus on Thursday to watch Republican Senate hopeful Herschel Walker make one of his last pitches to voters before the Dec. 6 election.
The larger-than-life football legend was greeted with cheers after he stepped off his red and black tour bus that has his face emblazoned on the side. He made his entrance midway through George Thorogood’s song “Bad to the Bone” and paused for dramatic effect before breaking out into a smile.
The attendees ate it up.
“That’s my man!” Juanita Coball, waving a red Team Herschel sign, told the Washington Examiner. “He’s all that and every bag of chip or whatever y’all are saying these days.”
“That’s my man, that’s my man,” she repeated in her outdoor voice before being shushed.
At the Herschel Walker event in Columbus, Ga. Not to ton of people so far but more are expected. Mike Pompeo will be at the event stumping for the Georgia Senate hopeful. #walker #gasenate pic.twitter.com/4HH7yRJ3hG
— Barnini Chakraborty (@Barnini) December 1, 2022
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Walker is in the final stretch of his campaign against incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. The two were forced into a runoff after neither candidate was able to score enough votes for an outright win on Nov. 8.
Walker, who has been dogged in recent days by multiple scandals, told the slightly geriatric crowd he was born ready for political battle.
“Fights I am used to,” he said. “I’m from that school of Ricky Bobby.”
Walker told attendees that God had prepared him to run for office before launching into a recycled joke about St. Peter and an elevator to hell.
What Walker said Thursday wasn’t new — in fact, it was pretty much cut and pasted from previous speeches he gave at other campaign stops — but to those who attended, it didn’t matter.
“I love Herschel Walker,” a woman named Joanne told the Washington Examiner. “If I did not vote for Herschel Walker, my deceased husband would come up out of the grave because he was an avid football player, and I just think [Walker] is the best pick. He’d be so mad if I didn’t vote for him. I’m a conservative and I love Herschel Walker and I love everything he stands for.”
Joanne brushed off concerns that Walker had lied about his ties to law enforcement, the number of children he has, and where he lives. She also didn’t seem to have a problem with Walker allegedly pressuring two women to get abortions while campaigning on a strict no-abortion platform.
“They are probably lying,” Joanne said.
Voter Josephine Banks, one of about five nonwhite people at the event, accused Warnock, a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, of “dividing black people against the white establishment.”
“We’ve got to get away from that,” she said.
Sandra Jenkins said she would be voting for Walker because the former Heisman Trophy winner and political newcomer is “straightforward.”
“He tells things like they are, and I think he’s going to improve our economy,” she told the Washington Examiner.
For his part, Walker didn’t really delve into the economy or anything specific. He used the same folksy lines he has delivered at almost every campaign event.
He compared Warnock’s debate performance in Savannah to Scooby-Doo and said he was happy he was born a boy and that there were only two genders.
“What the heck is a pronoun anyway?” he asked. “I don’t even know what a pronoun is.”
Walker also claimed students benefiting from President Joe Biden’s student loan relief program would spend the saved tuition money on drugs and alcohol and said Georgians shouldn’t be forced to co-sign loans for other people’s children.
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Walker was supposed to be joined at the Columbus event by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, just one of several prominent Republicans who have stepped in and lent their credibility to Walker in the final days of the campaign. Pompeo, however, was forced to pull out of Thursday’s events after his mother-in-law died. It is unclear whether he will attend any other events leading up to Tuesday’s election.
Walker is scheduled to hold a second campaign stop in Woodstock, Georgia, Thursday night, roughly around the same time his opponent holds a rally in Atlanta headlined by former President Barack Obama.
