Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 194
What Just Happened?
Herschel Walker (R) felt as though he should have received 100% of the vote in Johnson county — where he grew up — and was “absolutely shocked” by the result, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Walker: “I’m gonna call the sheriff and have him find out who didn’t vote for me.”
“Defeated Republican candidate Kari Lake sued state elections officials on Friday to challenge the counting and certification of the midterm election and ask to be declared the winner,” Reuters reports.
New York Times: “Ms. Lake’s lawsuit came after she had spent weeks making a series of public statements and social media posts aimed at sowing doubt in the outcome of a contest she lost by more than 17,000 votes to her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs. That loss was certified in documents signed on Monday by Ms. Hobbs, who currently serves as secretary of state.”
Washington Post: “Lake is the highest-profile election denier to contest her own loss in the midterm elections. Most others who lost have conceded defeat.”
NBC News: “The former Heisman Trophy-winning University of Georgia football star was hard to manage and coach, according to campaign staff who didn’t want to publicly speak about his foibles; they noted his poor public speaking skills and penchant for veering off message.”
“Behind the scenes, campaign insiders and their political allies describe a first-time celebrity candidate who was difficult to manage and utterly unprepared for a brutal campaign that would tarnish a once-sterling brand.”
Said one GOP strategist: “This is what you get when you have a candidate who threatened women, stalked them, paid them to have abortions, said crazy things and has an adversarial relationship with the English language.”
Steve Kornacki calculates that metropolitan Atlanta has shifted 42 percentage points towards the Democrats since 2004.
New York Times: “In state after state, the final turnout data shows that registered Republicans turned out at a higher rate — and in some places a much higher rate — than registered Democrats, including in many of the states where Republicans were dealt some of their most embarrassing losses.”
“Instead, high-profile Republicans like Herschel Walker in Georgia or Blake Masters in Arizona lost because Republican-leaning voters decided to cast ballots for Democrats.”
“Donald Trump’s attacks on fellow Republican David McCormick contributed to the former hedge fund manager’s loss in Pennsylvania’s Senate primary. Now, as McCormick considers running again for the Senate, Trump’s derision may not be such a liability,” the AP reports.
“While McCormick, 57, has not said whether he will challenge three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in 2024, he is taking steps signaling a campaign may be in the works, including attending recent receptions with influential GOP strategists and donors. McCormick also plans to publish a book in March — Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America — that could raise his profile.”
New York Times: “It quickly had Republican fingers pointing every which way: at Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader accused by detractors of abandoning or belittling embattled Republican Senate candidates; at Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who many feel badly mismanaged the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm; and at Mr. Walker himself, for hiding and lying about his past, only to see the details stream out steadily over the course of his campaign.”
“But for a handful of Republicans, newly emboldened by re-election or retirement to say so aloud, the biggest culprit was Mr. Trump. In increasingly biting terms, they slammed him for promoting flawed candidates, including Mr. Walker, dividing his party and turning many swing voters against the G.O.P. for the third election cycle in a row.”
NBC News: “That strong turnout was the key to Warnock’s victory, as the Democrat improved his results in almost two-thirds of Georgia’s 159 counties. The biggest improvements came in Stewart and Johnson counties, where Warnock’s share of the vote rose by more than 5 percentage points.”
“Warnock did better even in Republican areas of the state, as he improved his vote margin in 77 counties that voted for his GOP challenger, former football star Herschel Walker, in November’s election. Warnock also flipped two counties, Baldwin and Washington.”
Washington Post: Drop in Republican turnout means a bigger win for Warnock.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said that Herschel Walker (R) lost the Senate runoff in Georgia because his campaign team didn’t want her to speak at any of his campaign events, which she “found extremely insulting.”
Cook Political Report: “Now, every single Senate incumbent — most notably the quartet of first-term Democrats who seemed particularly vulnerable just a year ago — has won re-election.”
“That’s a first in American history since the direct election of senators. The last cycle when no incumbent lost re-election in the general election was in 1914 — the first under the newly-ratified 17th Amendment. However, that year two incumbents did lose in primaries.”
“And it marks the first time that our final Toss Up races split 100 percent toward the same party. There is no equivocating — this was a completely and totally disappointing midterm for Senate Republicans and a huge indictment on Trump, Trumpism and the mutually assured destruction the former president insists on taking the party even as he’s still myopically focused on the 2020 election and his bogus claims of fraud.”
“Georgia may be remembered as the state that broke Trump once and for all.”
— Republican strategist Scott Jennings, on Twitter.
Herschel Walker’s son, Christian, took aim at his father after his election loss, claiming Donald Trump convinced Herschel to run despite everyone else’s pleas against it.
Said the younger Walker: “Don’t beat women, hold guns to peoples heads, fund abortions then pretend you’re pro-life, stalk cheerleaders, leave your multiple minor children alone to chase more fame, lie, lie, lie, say stupid crap, and make a fool of your family. And then maybe you can win a senate seat.”
Ross Douthat: “Like a miracle sports team, the ’69 Mets or this year’s Moroccan World Cup soccer squad, Trump earned himself a storehouse of belief with his stunning upset in 2016. That the Republican Party then lost the House in 2018 — well, that was to be expected, since incumbent parties generally struggle in the midterms. That the G.O.P. lost the presidency in 2020 — well, there was a plague, mass protests, rejiggered election rules and a general atmosphere of craziness, and anyway the polls were wrong and Trump almost pulled it out in the Electoral College, the miracle juice still there but just not quite enough.”
“But to disappoint again in 2022, in a context where many Republicans expected to do extremely well — and more, to have so many of Trump’s preferred candidates flop while less other Republicans won easily — well, at a certain point the memory of 2016 fades, and the storehouse of faith and good will is depleted.”
Matt Lewis: Republicans are losers if they continue using same playbook.
Playbook: “Over the past 30 months, Raphael Warnock has won a Senate primary, got the most votes in two general elections and won two runoffs. On Tuesday night, he finally won a full six-year term in the United States Senate.”
“A lot has been said about how flawed a candidate that Warnock’s opponent, Herschel Walker, was. (A lot.) And so much of the conversation and coverage of Georgia’s election centered on what it would mean for the power of a current and a former president.”
“But Warnock’s three-point win Tuesday underscored his own talents and cemented the 53-year-old pastor as one of the nation’s most compelling and effective Democratic politicians…”
“Warnock heads back to Capitol Hill with his political stock at a new high. While Georgia’s runoff system is uniquely exhausting and historically suspect, it has redounded to Warnock’s benefit: Saturation coverage of two consecutive runoffs has made him one of the most recognizable United States senators in the country.”
Punchbowl News: “This also closes the book on a utterly disastrous cycle for Senate Republicans and former President Donald Trump. Despite a favorable political landscape, a first-term president stumbling in the polls and hundreds of millions of dollars in TV ads, Republicans squandered chances to pick up winnable seats in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and New Hampshire. Trump-backed candidates lost all those races.”
“Maybe nowhere was that more evident than the Peach State, where Trump recruited Walker to run. Trump’s endorsement and his status as a Georgia football icon got Walker through the GOP primary pretty easily.”
“But an unending stream of scandals involving Walker’s personal life, coupled with his subpar performance as a candidate, doomed his campaign.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) defeated Herschel Walker (R) in the Georgia Senate runoff, according to David Wasserman.
The Needle and Decision Desk HQ also say Warnock will win.
The win gives Democrats a 51 to 49 majority in the Senate.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and challenger Herschel Walker (R) are facing off in a runoff for U.S. Senate in Georgia.
The result will determine whether Democrats win an outright majority in the Senate, 51 to 49, or whether the chamber stays evenly divided. Just one seat could make a big difference for Democrats.
And for those who can stomach it, the needle will be live.
The polls close at 7 p.m. ET.
Leave your reactions in the comments.
Nate Cohn says it’s hard to come up with good reasons that Herschel Walker (R) would do better in the Senate runoff than he did a month ago.
“The core issue for Mr. Walker is simple: He is a flawed and unpopular candidate, while Mr. Warnock, by contrast, is fairly popular. And unlike in the November election, the two are the only candidates on the ballot in most of the state. This poses a much greater challenge to Mr. Walker in the runoff election than it did in the general election.”
“It’s easy to imagine several kinds of voters who backed Mr. Walker in November but who won’t be showing up this time.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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