Herschel Walker’s personal life has already received some scrutiny as his Senate campaign has advanced. The Georgia Republican has, for example, faced allegations of domestic violence and other dangerous personal behavior from his past.
These questions took an unexpected twist last night. The Daily Beast reported on a young man the outlet described as a “secret son.”
What Walker hasn’t publicly acknowledged is that he has a second son, who has apparently been estranged from his biological father since his birth a decade ago. The son, whose name The Daily Beast is withholding out of privacy concerns, has grown up more than 1,500 miles from Walker’s Texas home. And the mother, whose name we are also withholding for privacy reasons, had to take Walker to court a year after giving birth in order to secure a declaration of paternity and child support.
After the report’s publication, Walker confirmed its accuracy.
It may be tempting to think that this is solely a family matter, which should have little or no bearing on the Republican’s Senate candidacy. Practically by definition, we’re talking about private, not public, affairs.
As the Daily Beast’s report noted, however, the problem with that defense is that Walker, who has no political record, has spent years making public condemnations “against fatherless households and deadbeat dads — specifically in the Black community.”
The New York Times highlighted several such examples, each of which will now be seen in an uncomfortable new light.
In a 2020 interview with the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, he called the absence of fathers “a major, major problem” in Black households and boasted of having been “like a father” to many young people in his hometown in Georgia. And in a 2021 interview with the Black conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk, Mr. Walker lamented that “the father leaves in the Black family. He leaves the boys alone so they’ll be raised by their mom,” comparing the dynamic to family separations during slavery.
“If you have a child with a woman,” Walker continued in that interview, “even if you have to leave that woman — even if you have to leave that woman — you don’t leave that child.”
In a normal campaign, candidates at this point would ordinarily make every effort to shift their focus to possible strengths: Plenty of politicians with messy personal lives have fallen back on policy expertise, impressive records in office, bold governing visions, and sterling reputations for integrity.
In Walker’s case, this isn’t an option. The former football player can’t fall back on any of these things because he doesn’t appear to know much of anything about public policy; he’s never held elected office; and he’s routinely made up stories about his past that bear no resemblance to reality. As we’ve discussed, Republican primary voters in Georgia were obviously unmoved by all of this — Walker recently defeated his next closest GOP primary rival by nearly 55 points — and polling suggest he will be a highly competitive general election candidate against Sen. Raphael Warnock in the fall. But that doesn’t make the scope of the candidate’s difficulties any less extraordinary. Related:
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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