THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 23Georgia has become a personal battle-
ground for Trump, still bitter about losing
the state in 2020. He has not only backed
Walker to regain the Senate seat Republi-
cans lost to Warnock in a runoff election in
January 2021, but he has backed David
Perdue — who lost his Senate seat to
Democrat Jon Ossoff in the state’s other
runoff election — to oust Gov. Brian Kemp.
After the 2020 presidential election, Kemp
rebuffed the president’s admonition to find
11,780 votes to reverse Georgia’s electoral
results (a grand jury in Atlanta is investi-
gating Trump’s action). Trump was back
for another rally in March, this one in
Commerce, to support seven candidates,
including Perdue and Walker. Trump re-
newed his attack on Kemp but fretted, “If
Kemp runs, I think Herschel Walker is
gonna be ... very seriously and negatively
impacted. ... A vote for Brian Kemp, RINO,
in the primary is a vote for a Democrat
senator who shouldn’t be in the Senate.”
So is Trump exploiting Walker to slake
his personal vendetta? “[Walker] has posi-
tioned himself into being a useful fool for
those who don’t have the best interests of
Black people or this democracy at heart,”
says Harry Edwards, a sports sociologist,
civil rights activist and professor emeritus
at the University of California at Berkeley.
It’s not clear how much Trump’s sup-began his 13-year NFL career, not until he was drafted by the
Dallas Cowboys and the USFL folded.
In Georgia, Walker’s popularity seems to have only grown over
the years. At a home game reuniting the 1980 Bulldogs team this
past fall, the student section took up the chant, “Herschel!
Herschel!” — just like old times.
A March Fox News poll of Republican primary voters in
Georgia found Herschel Walker far ahead of other candidates,
with 66 percent support, compared with single-digit support for
other candidates.
The devotion of his followers runs deep. Take Sue Hall, who
graduated in Walker’s class, still lives in Wrightsville and appears
in one of his campaign commercials. When asked about Walker’s
violent past, including allegations that he threatened to kill his
ex-wife, she told me, “He’s probably like every one of us; he’s had
his issues and had to grow. All of us have to adjust.”
When I said, “Yes, but most of us haven’t threatened to kill
someone,” she responded, “I believe in him. He’s a moral person.
Even if he were not a former classmate, I’d vote for him because
of his values.”
T
he night after the Republican Jewish Coalition event,
Walker is in Dahlonega, an hour drive north of Atlanta and
county seat of Lumpkin County — a very White and poor county
— for a fundraiser. A crowd of 150 has paid $20 apiece and filled
the parks and rec gymnasium. In Walker’s 35-minute speech he
works the crowd’s emotions, telling stories about his mother, how
he loves the flag and that communists imprison Christians — “Do
you want a government like that?” He demonizes Warnock —
“He’s a reverend but he believes in abortion!” — and President
Biden, and he mocks the news media “that don’t want to tell the
truth.” He also makes false statements, such as “Do you know 70
percent of the drugs coming into America go through Atlanta?”
When Walker proclaims, “America does come first!” a man seated
behind me shouts, “Alleluia!”
The performance echoes a Trump rally, which isn’t surprising
since it was Donald Trump who encouraged Walker to get into
politics in the first place. The two have known each other since
1984, after Trump bought the USFL team that lured Walker away
from Georgia. Thinking of quitting football, Walker turned to the
new owner for advice, and Trump, not wanting to lose his team’s
star and the league’s marquee player, talked him into staying.
“Mr. Trump became a mentor to me,” Walker writes in his 2008
memoir, “Breaking Free,” “and I modeled myself and my business
practices after him.”
They maintained a friendship, traveling together on occasion
with their families. Walker backed Trump early in his first
presidential campaign and said in a video played at the 2020
Republican National Convention, “Most of you know me as a
football player, but I’m also ... a very good judge of character,”
before extolling Trump’s moral fiber.
So when Trump tweeted in March 2021, “Run Herschel, run!”
Walker answered the call. At a rally in Perry, Ga., on a Saturday
afternoon in September, many in the audience wore red MAGA-
knockoff caps with the slogan “Run Herschel Run” and greeted
their favorite son with the Bulldog chant “woof, woof, woof!”
When Trump took the stage, he called Walker up to “say a few
words,” seemingly unaware Walker had already given a nine-min-
ute speech. Walker awkwardly obliged, expressing his fealty to
Trump and ending by telling the crowd, “I want to be a leader like
him when I get to that Senate seat to show everyone I love
America.”
PHOTOS: NICOLE CRAINE
These pages from
left: Herschel
Walker’s jersey as
well as photos of
Walker in various
roles adorn a wall at
Johnson County High
School in his
hometown,
Wrightsville, Ga. A
water tower in town.
Previous pages:
Walker greets
supporters at a
campaign rally in
Commerce, Ga., in
March.