Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday endorsed Herschel Walker for the Senate in Georgia, lending the clout of the highest-ranking elected GOP official in the country to the candidacy of a former football star whose turbulent personal history could create problems for his general election campaign.
Walker is the odds-on favorite to win the Republican primary next May and at an initial glance seems to have a coveted political profile as he seeks the chance to unseat Democrat Raphael Warnock, the state’s first Black senator, and help the GOP regain control of the Senate.
His campaign was first boosted by former President Donald Trump, a longtime friend who repeatedly urged Walker to run.
Walker was a football hero at the University of Georgia before a long NFL career. He’s a business owner whose chicken products are widely distributed.
McConnell, R-Ky., was initially cool to a Walker candidacy. But by endorsing him now, McConnell can sidestep what could have been a messy intraparty fight with Trump that might have complicated the quest to retake a Senate majority.
“I am happy to endorse Herschel Walker for U.S. Senate in Georgia,” McConnell said in a statement. “Herschel is the only one who can unite the party, defeat Senator Warnock, and help us take back the Senate. I look forward to working with Herschel in Washington to get the job done.”
Walker was effusive in his own statement, praising McConnell’s “commitment to bringing the party together toward the collective goal of defeating Senator Warnock.”
“The Democrats have already said they will spend whatever it takes to keep Georgia blue,” Walker said. “The stakes have never been higher — if we all work together, we will win next November, and take back the Senate. Team Herschel is very thankful for Senator McConnell’s support.”
The 2022 Senate race is shaping up as one of the most heavily contested races of the election cycle. Georgia, long solid GOP territory, became a top battleground after Democrat Joe Biden carried it last year in the presidential election in November. Democrats then took both Senate seats in run-off elections in January.
Warnock won a special election to fill out the remainder of the term of Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, who retired, and will have to run in 2022 for a six-year term.
A number of Republicans quickly lined up to enter the primary. But Walker, who cryptically teased a candidacy for months, effectively froze the field because of his close affiliation with Trump.
Walker launched his campaign in late August and is one of a handful of Trump-backed candidates who have raised GOP worries because they received minimal screening before earning the former president’s endorsement.
Walker disclosed his battle with mental illness in a 2008 book, “Breaking Free,” detailing a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. In that account, Walker told of as many as a dozen personalities — or “alters” — that he had constructed as a defense mechanism against the bullying he said he endured as a stuttering, overweight child.
Walker pitched a turnaround story, saying he decided in 2001 that “it was time to stop running and face some harsh realities.” He cited therapy and his Christian faith as influences.
His watershed moment: driving his car to confront a man who had “messed up my schedule” and thinking about what it would be like to shoot the man. Walker changed course, he wrote, after seeing a bumper sticker with the message “SMILE. JESUS LOVES YOU.”
Walker’s primary rivals pledged to forge on, despite McConnell’s endorsement.
“We’re in this race to win it, we’re Georgia’s candidate (not the Swamp’s),” said Georgia’s agriculture commissioner Gary Black, who compared his campaign to the Atlanta Braves’ unexpected World Series run. “Our mindset today is the same as the #Braves: Kill the narrative.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article