Nathan News

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Former football great Herschel Walker, struggling from behind in his challenge to Sen. Raphael Warnock, tried to turn the campaign narrative on its head during a debate Friday night, in an effort to dispel doubts about his own fitness for duty by seeking to interview Mr. Warnock.

Mr Walker, a Republican, has sought to portray his Democratic rival as the untrustworthy candidate in the race, loudly demanding: ‘Do not bear false witness’. Mr Warnock hit back by saying at one point that ‘my children know I am with them and for them’ – a far from subtle reminder to Georgians of Mr Walker’s turbulent personal life and accusations that he is an absent father to at least one of his children.

The first and probably only debate in the critical Senate race in Georgia, just three days before the start of early voting in the state, was contentious and often messy, pitting a political novice, Mr Walker, against the incumbent Democrat , Mr. Warnock, a veteran speaker who delivers sermons almost every Sunday at the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Mr Warnock, with a narrow and tenuous lead in the polls, was controlled and cautious, attacking only a few times and avoiding answering questions directly when that could alienate the moderate Republicans he courted. Mr. Walker was aggressive and persistent, sometimes mocking his opponent’s dodges, often interrupting him, and constantly exceeding his time limits, earning admonitions from the moderators.

Mr Walker’s posture reflected his need for a strong performance after weeks of negative headlines, especially claims by a former girlfriend that he had paid for an abortion and urged her to end a second pregnancy, even though Mr. Walker is campaigning on his opposition to abortion. .

Despite its troubles, the National Republican Party backed its nominee, sending in professional campaign reinforcements and debate advice — and those moves appear to have paid off.

After campaigning very right-wing, Mr Walker turned the field around on Friday, reversing some key elements of his platform. He had said for months that he wanted to end abortion without exception. On Friday, he said he supported exceptions the Georgian legislature has included in its six-week abortion ban, for women whose pregnancies are considered futile or for medical emergencies and cases of rape or abuse. ‘incest.

In December 2020, Mr Walker said: “I can guarantee you that Joe Biden didn’t get 50 million people to vote for him. But yet, people think he won this election. On Friday night, he said Mr Biden had won the election.

Mr Warnock declined to say whether he thought Mr Biden should stand for re-election, saying: “Are you asking me who is going to run in 24? The people of Georgia decide who will be their senator in three days. He also enacted many of the policies the president has advocated, such as canceling student loans.

At times, Mr. Walker stumbled over his political language and detail, notably when he said he wanted Georgians to ditch government health care for the kind of insurance that Mr. Warnock has, namely government-subsidized health care.

At one point, Mr Walker also appeared to blame people with diabetes for their condition, saying during a discussion of insulin costs that while he believed in lowering the price of the drug, “in same time, you have to eat well”. adding that “unless you’re eating right, insulin doesn’t do you any good.”

But overall Mr Walker held firm after he and his campaign diligently tried to lower expectations ahead of the debate. A month earlier, the candidate had told reporters half-jokingly that he was “a country boy” and “not so smart”. Mr. Warnock, he said, “was going to show up and embarrass me”.

That didn’t happen, but Mr. Walker’s biggest task was to dispel doubts about his qualifications for the job.

We don’t know if he succeeded. He continued his outright denial of his former girlfriend’s abortion requests. “I said it was a lie, and I’m not backing down,” he said.

In perhaps Mr Warnock’s most combative move, he went from a question about ‘defunding the police’ to Mr Walker’s story of violent altercations and exaggerations of his resume, including a claim that he had been in law enforcement.

“I never pretended to be a police officer and I never threatened a shootout with the police,” Mr Warnock said, prompting Mr Walker to appear to prove his opponent’s point – and clash with the debate moderators – pulling what appeared to be a badge from his pocket, a violation of the props debate ban.

Needing to land blows, Mr Walker sought to brand Mr Warnock a prevaricator, a line of attack which stemmed from newspaper stories about a report that the Ebenezer Baptist Church had attempted to evict some residents of a building she owns.

Mr Warnock said the church did not expel anyone, even claiming his opponent defiled the pulpit from which the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. But that only prompted Mr Walker to suggest he was lying.

Mr Warnock retorted: “My opponent has a problem with the truth.

Absent from the debate, the focus was on Mr Walker’s baggage, which includes allegations of domestic abuse, his out-of-wedlock children and altercations with police. Moderators at the hour-long debate, hosted in Savannah by Nexstar Media, frequently interrupted exchanges about personalities and pasts in hopes of focusing on the issues – but that approach seemed to favor Mr Walker.

When Mr Walker’s personal issues surfaced in the references, he repeated his past statements that he struggled with mental illness and had since received successful treatment. He also tried to say that Mr Warnock stigmatizes mental illness by questioning his past.

Mr Walker said he was no longer being treated for dissociative identity disorder, the mental illness he blamed on violence in his past.

“I am ready to serve,” he said.

He tried to underscore the point by contrasting Mr Warnock, who he said had repeatedly voted online with Mr Biden “96% of the time”.

“Obviously he is right to say that he tried to do over and over again,” replied a more agitated Mr. Warnock in the final minutes of the debate.

The two candidates had engaged in months of back and forth to decide if, where and when they would argue, before finally agreeing to Friday’s event.

Before the debate, Mr Warnock had tried to campaign heavily on politics to avoid direct confrontations with his opponent. But on his behalf, Democrats flooded the airwaves with millions of dollars of negative publicity against Mr Walker, highlighting domestic abuse allegations made by his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, and son Christian Walker.

On Friday, Mr Walker acknowledged that some voters might be worried about his candidacy, looking directly at the camera and making a direct appeal to those “who are afraid to vote for me, a non-politician”.