(Aug. 26) This week’s entrance of all-time football great Herschel Walker into the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Georgia immediately makes his campaign the most fascinating of the year.
Walker once was voted the greatest college football player of all time, and if he had not spent his first three professional years with the upstart United States Football League, he surely would be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As it is, if his USFL statistics are incorporated into his NFL totals, he ranks as the all-time leader in career all-purpose yards. He is also a martial arts black belt and was an all-American sprinter. And consider this for well-rounded: He finished No. 7 in the two-man bobsled in the 1992 Winter Olympics.
A valedictorian of his high school class, a successful businessman, and the co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Walker is hardly devoid of nonathletic accomplishments. A conservative of long-standing, Walker’s superb introductory campaign video quite believably and effectively makes clear how deeply rooted his political principles and patriotism are.
Then again, a statewide race for the U.S. Senate in a large swing state is not an easy thing for a first-time candidate. And it definitely remains to be seen how voters will weigh his long-acknowledged battle with “dissociative identity disorder,” a mental health condition previously known as multiple personality disorder. Walker’s openness about his condition, his long advocacy for mental health, and his accomplishments despite it all argue in his favor. Still, how will voters react when news emerges of any embarrassing episodes that may have occurred because of it?
Walker is an extremely hard worker. He’ll give this campaign everything he has. He’ll give this campaign everything he has. Other star athletes, including Jim Bunning, Bob Mathias, Jack Kemp, Jim Ryun, Bill Bradley, and Steve Largent, have successfully entered politics. Walker’s bid ensures that political handicappers trying to predict partisan control of the Senate in 2022 will have Georgia on their minds. [This is the full column. It originally ran here.]
