ATLANTA — The sudden turn by Herschel Walker's son, Christian, against the Republican Senate candidate after reported revelations that he paid for a girlfriend's abortion in 2009 was "shocking," a leading Atlanta political scientist said.
The Daily Beast broke the news Monday night, reporting to have seen receipts for the procedure from the woman, who asked not to be identified for the article.
Walker has denied the report and said he would sue, calling it a “flat-out lie."
His son Christian - an influencer of sorts among young conservatives with nearly 300,000 followers on Twitter - added fuel to the fire, however, repudiating his father in posts to the social media platform.
"Family values people? He has four kids - four different women. Wasn't in the house raising one of them. He was out having sex with other women. Do you care about family values?" Christian said in a video posted Tuesday. "The abortion card drops yesterday, it's literally his handwriting... they say they have receipts, whatever. He gets on Twitter, he lies about it. Okay, I'm done. Done. Everything has been a lie."
Christian tweeted the previous night, after the release of the article: "I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You’re not a 'family man' when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence."
Emory University political scientist Andra Gillespie told 11Alive her first reaction when she saw the video was: "Is this real?"
She said her snap instinct was to be skeptical, because Christian Walker doesn't have a verified Twitter account. But the account is his, and there hasn't been any dispute about whether or not he made the posts (Herschel Walker in fact tweeted, "I LOVE my son no matter what," after Christian's initial posts.)
"I was actually really shocked that he had come out so vociferously kind of criticizing his father," Gillespie told 11Alive. "And that he had reached this breaking point where he felt he had to publicly break from his father... part of me was like, 'am I sure this is actually Christian Walker talking?'"
Analyzing how this might impact the Senate race between Walker and Democratic incumbent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, Gillespie said The Daily Beast report could significantly undermine on a position where Walker was targeting Warnock.
"The reason this is damaging is that Walker was likely going to make an issue of the fact that Raphael Warnock is a minister - a Christian minister who supports abortion rights - and he views that as inherently contradictory. And that's still going to resonate for some pro-life evangelical voters, but this makes it a lot harder for Walker to levy this kind of critique or attack on Warnock. So we may not even hear him bring this up - in a debate for instance or in future ads - because it just opens up the possibility for Warnock to counter," Gillespie said. "And I expect that Warnock is going to go on the offense with this type of information, or if he doesn't then one of the super PACs supporting him will."
Of political ads, Gillespie said Christian Walker's videos could now very well wind up in Democratic ads targeting Herschel Walker. She said they could potentially most potently be used in digital ads targeting younger voters, with whom Christian Walker has had an audience.
Gillespie said for the most part, voters in Georgia probably already have their minds made up about the Senate race - "I expect Herschel Walker to get at least 45% of the vote, just on the basis of partisanship," she said - but added that publicity of this report, and Christian Walker's reaction amplifying it, could play a role with the small sliver of voters who could still be captured.
That population could include, most significantly she said, Republicans who in 2020 simply declined to vote for Donald Trump but still voted along GOP lines down-ballot.
That year, former Sen. David Perdue actually wound up with more total votes than Trump in Georgia. She predicted we could see something similar now with Walker, in the top race on the ballot, and Gov. Brian Kemp in the next race down.
"I think what's going to happen amongst reliable voters is though the Senate race is at the top of the ticket, the gubernatorial race is just as important and so what's more likely to happen is you'll have people who vote in the governor's race who don't vote in the Senate race," she said. "I would not be surprised if particularly on the Republican side you see Brian Kemp, though he's in the second marquee race, get in absolute numbers more votes than Herschel Walker did - not dissimilar from what happened in the 2020 election when David Perdue actually got more votes than Donald Trump."
What Gillespie is looking for, to determine if this episode has real political impact, is whether it penetrates conservative and right-wing media, where Christian Walker has made appearances in the past.
"A (family) rift in and of itself does not necessarily mean that the candidate themself is doomed from being able to win, but I think this is a terrible look and one of the things I'm curious about is whether or not this message goes viral in conservative communities," she said. "Young people are going to see this, Democrats are going to see this - is this going to get any airtime on Fox News?"
"I'm used to hearing him say or use the same talking points as his father," she added. "So to hear him lash out in this way was actually really shocking."