Herschel Walker, 60, is a former NFL player whose qualifications to be a U.S. senator consist of winning the GOP nomination because of his name familiarity.
That’s as far as he should get. There’s nothing wrong with the incumbent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home church of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
But Georgia voters have other reasons to reject Walker: His lack of character. He’s dishonest, especially about his resume.
Walker’s lying started with a claim “he graduated from the University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class” (per Wikipedia, here). In fact, he left school without graduating. Later he claimed he returned and got his degree, which isn’t true, either. Then he lied again by saying he never told those lies.
Now, his latest lie: Mother Jones reports (here) that “Walker said on at least three occasions that he had worked in law enforcement—and he once even claimed to be an FBI agent.” The facts:
“Walker’s campaign said that he was an honorary deputy at Georgia’s Cobb County Police Department, which, a former DeKalb County district attorney said, is ‘like a junior ranger badge.’ As for being in the FBI, well, Walker spent a week at an FBI training school in Quantico, Virginia, in 1989. He never graduated college, a prerequisite for joining the FBI.”
But that’s not all: Walker wasn’t even truthful about how many children he’s fathered; it had to be pried out of him (see story here).
Herschel Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner, doesn’t have to pad his football resume. Why does he lie so much? Maybe he’s afraid people will think he doesn’t have any other credentials. (They’d be right to think so.)
Or maybe it’s simply because all Republicans lie a lot, and it’s just part of their culture.
Update (6/16/22): Walker — a fierce critic of absentee fathers — doesn’t have just one illegimate child; it turns out that he has three, and he lied in a radio interview about how many women he’d slept with (see story here).