Herschel Walker's Insane Run For Supremacy
An election denier with a history of domestic abuse, mental issues and no political experience shouldn't be regarded as a politician just because he fundraises like one.
Herschel Walker was a runner. He was a very good runner, so good in fact that he won a national championship and a Heisman Trophy while running for the University of Georgia. He ran in the USFL and the NFL, for the Generals of New Jersey and the Cowboys of Dallas and the Vikings and the Eagles and the Giants. Walker ran after being handed and thrown and kicked the football, each for several thousands of yards over nearly two full decades. He ran hard and fast, over and through men who helplessly tried to wrestle his knees or elbows or torso to the turf.
Walking and running are antonyms, the former a more casual and inclusive, less judgmental version of the latter. They are silent enemies, wayfarers separated by fitness and urgency. Walker and running, however, were symbiotic, a covalent bond of an element more impenetrable than metal. This atomic connection was sharpened and sutured many times over, like a jagged mountaintop after a rash of avalanches. Even the strongest elements, however, lose their shine with age.
One day, as great, stubborn running backs tend to do once their 30s crawl toward their 40s, Walker stopped running.
Years passed. Walker’s body grew wrinkles; his muscles stayed intact but his mind turned to mush; he became violent, suicidal, conspiratorial and completely unmoored from the planet he once shook with his cleats. He threatened to kill his ex-wife, boasted about playing Russian Roulette solo more than six times and, a couple days before psychotic sycophants of Donald Trump descended on the Capitol in a foamy wave of white rage, he sent a tweet—liked and shared more than 20,000 times—that not-so-subtly called for ethnic cleansing. Walker without running was like Buddy Rich in a world without hi-hats: virtuosic speed and power lacking a complete vessel to showcase it. A supreme talent with an insane work ethic, Walker’s talent eventually lost its grandeur, so he picked up the pieces and became an white supremacist.
The Campaign
In June, Walker decided—perhaps with an offensive-line-like nudge over the goal line from Trump—to run again. With no political experience, no policy agenda and no clear residence within the boundaries of his new campaign, the 59-year-old Texan announced he would seek office as a United States Senator representing the state of Georgia. If he can beat his GOP competitors, which he’s already on track to do, he’ll face off against incumbent Raphael Warnock in 2022.
Nearly every former American professional athlete who has run for governor, U.S. Senator, U.S. House of Representatives, or president has been Republican. That is not by accident. The party craves machismo over substance. Its most prominent faces, schlubs like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, often resemble athletes and coaches at a press conference in their messaging, saying a whole mouthful without actually giving away any useful information. Rubio farts bible verses like Tim Tebow, while Cruz sashays to Cancun during a crisis like Urban Meyer missing a team plane. The GOP perceives itself to be in constant competition with the Democratic party, inventing new ways to rile up their base in a dogpile of aggression like uniformed men grasping for possession of a dropped ball. It is exactly the environment for an erstwhile sportsman with no clear political compass to thrive.
Pro athletes who transition into politics in middle age often share a common thread: they lean heavily on their past unrelated experience and meaningless platitudes to engender trust and respect among their constituents. Jim Ryun, a middle-distance Olympian and former congressman from Kansas, said in July 2020 while receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump—who passed this prestigious award out like a fifth-grade girl pasting cheek kisses on every boy showing her affection at recess—"In a day and age when many think it's appropriate to dishonor our flag, I will tell you, it is one of the greatest honors and privileges of my life to represent this amazing country and to wear the stars and stripes on my chest while racing in the 60s and 70s.” Arnold Schwarzenegger once told troops in Iraq, “I played the Terminator, but you guys are true terminators.” Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann, in a failed bid to become the first African-American governor of Pennsylvania, revealed little about his overall philosophy, instead emphasizing that Democrats have “taken the African-American vote for granted,” a refrain that has far preceded and outlived Swann’s dip into the political pond.
Bob Mathias, a two-time gold medalist in the decathlon and U.S. congressman from California, was one of the few athlete-politician crossovers who sounded like he understood the assignment. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1988, “You just can’t run on your name and do a lousy job. You have got to work at it.” Mathias, who was one of several dozen Republicans voted out of office after the Watergate scandal, had a point.
Work looks different for Walker today than it did for Mathias back then. The Reaganite classified himself as a “fiscal conservative”, and though Ronald Reagan himself was cut from the mold of a man riding a past career to a new one he was wholly unqualified for, he and his political peers generally had to at least deign an economic platform to be taken seriously; Walker, meanwhile, can carry around a Bingo card of buzz words — FREEDOM, PATRIOT, FLAG, JESUS, CRITICAL RACE THEORY— and perform perfectly fine in the polls. Despite being as aimless as former Auburn coach and present-day U.S. Senator from Alabama Tommy Tuberville and as extremist as U.S. Rep. from North Carolina Madison Cawthorn, Walker is more invincible now than he was when he wore shoulder pads because he crosses off a laundry list of qualities Republicans are looking for in a candidate. Unlike the NFL Hall of Fame, which doesn’t deem Walker worthy despite his persistent overtures for inclusion, there are systems in place to vault Walker to Washington, D.C., even if he didn’t earn it.
The Background
Republicans love party members who preserve the racial and social hierarchy, especially if they identify with any of the historically oppressed groups. Aside from being a chiseled athlete, already a marketable portrait of masculinity for the GOP, Walker is a Black man devoted to making life easier primarily for wealthy white men. His son Christian Walker is gay and frequently gets invited onto Fox News to shout that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, a lie championed by his dad. Both father and son rail against identity politics—a prerequisite for a successful campaign of a Black Republican—and the all-encompassing woke-ism. This is tactical. It’s also who Herschel Walker is.
In a 1981 profile in the New York Times, Walker was criticized for not taking part in marches against police brutality in his hometown of Wrightsville, Georgia, and it was suggested as racist that he spent time with more white students in college than Blacks. His response was, ''Well, mostly I hang out with the football team,” which, at the time, comprised a more equal mix of white and Black athletes. The accusation brought up “by some,” the New York Times wrote, that he was prejudiced against his own race for spending more time with white kids clearly irked Walker. He was portrayed as a prodigy who wouldn’t let distractions, like advocating for equal rights, or complaints, like admitting that fewer doors might open for him because of the color of his skin, stand in his way.
Walker came of age at a time when uprisings in response to unrestrained police brutality were decreasing, the tension in Wrightsville notwithstanding. There was a heated period in the late 1960s and ‘70s in cities like Cairo, Illinois, and Newark, New Jersey, where Black residents fought back against unfulfilled promises from civil rights legislation, the over-policing of their towns and white vigilantism that stifled their supposed freedom. Throughout the next two decades, the War on Drugs would become popular among Reagan conservatives and Clinton Democrats alike, as crime spiked and the response, then as now, was to pour more money into funding law enforcement efforts. The battle for civil rights wasn’t as constant in the news cycle as it was in the ‘60s or as it has been over the last decade. During the time when most voters fully form their political identity, in young adulthood, Walker was flourishing as an athlete and easily could have fooled himself into thinking systemic racism had vanished as thousands of Black citizens were being locked up for minor offenses and crimes they didn’t commit.
A few years after his NFL career ended, Walker was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder. This would lead to violent outbursts and irrational behavior, occurring at the same time that Walker was touring the country, speaking at public events and recounting his life story. He’d often spin his mental illness as an obstacle he was overcoming, bursting with religiosity to connect with his audience. Walker once explained he picked up a handgun to chase down and kill a delivery driver with whom he had an undisclosed “long-standing problem”, only to change plans when he saw the delivery man had a “Honk if you love Jesus” bumper sticker on the rear of his truck.
Walker said in 2013, according to the Fort Jackson Leader, “I started to pray, 'God, I need your help. I need you to help me before I do something stupid.'"
Auditioning for the prestigious role of United States Senator may seem stupid, considering the heavy baggage he’s carrying from his past. Republican voters won’t be deterred. Walker can sell his obvious weaknesses as part of an underdog narrative. Democrats may see a man who has been close to committing murder and suicide as unstable; Republicans, more effective than Brita in filtering out all the information they don’t want to consume, will see the same man who once was lost but has since repaired his relationship with the Lord™.
In another era, maybe Walker would have realized he’s in no position to run for public office; but he’s beginning his foray into politics in a time of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the U.S. Rep. from Georgia who harasses her colleagues outside the Capitol, and Lauren Boebert, the U.S. Rep. from Colorado who tweeted the location of Nancy Pelosi on January 6 to increase the chances she’d be found and executed. The climate is ripe for Hurricane Herschel to further upend democracy’s tenuous grip on American soil.
Walker is an outsider, both to the political sphere and to Georgia, a state he hasn’t lived in for quite some time. That only increases his profile in GOP circles. Untested candidates are enjoying a bit of a renaissance in the shadow of ultimate outsider Trump. The most heated current political race in the country is for Virginia governor, where Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who has already served the role, is being compelled to prove his bona fides against Glenn Youngkin, a private equity executive who has identified waging a war against Critical Race Theory as his clearest path to the nomination.
The End
Georgia Republicans, many of whom are still seething at the heroism of Stacey Abrams flipping a Deep South state blue, don’t need Walker to show them he’s qualified. Walker has the résumé they want—outwardly Christian, QAnon-friendly, a skin-deep score for diversity—so long as he doesn’t cause too much controversy. He fumbled his sole responsibility last week when a fundraiser he had planned to host in Texas (yes, Texas) was canceled because the Twitter profile picture of the fundraiser’s host contained a literal swastika.
He can sympathize with Nazis, hold rallies alongside Trump, hijack the most famous Forrest Gump quote for his campaign slogan—this one is a less serious offense, but still—propose ethnic cleansing and say nothing at all about how he plans to do his job.
Walker ran once. He’s running again. And it’s not impossible to envision him gaining enough steam, shedding tacklers and supplanting Warnock, with some extra blocking from voter suppression on his way to the Senate. Hopeful Georgia Democrats can attempt to stop the former running back before the momentum carries him to the Republican nomination, or they can accept a bleak future lies ahead no matter what and repeat the words of Walker after he almost murdered someone: “God, I need your help.”