Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
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Herschel Walker
Former football star Herschel Walker has attracted a large following as a commentator over the last decade, carefully crafting an image as an upstanding Black American with a focus on conservative “family values.” So when news broke last week of Walker having a 10-year-old child whom he did not raise, the Georgia Republican Senate candidate's detractors began hammering on the contradictions between his moralizing speeches and his own life.
Walker has made his stance against fatherless households a key component of his personal political brand. In a 2020 interview, he said the Black community has a “major, major problem” with fatherless homes.
Media reports later confirmed that he has two additional previously unknown children, a teenage boy and a woman in her forties. Before the news broke, the public only knew of the son he has raised with his ex-wife and current wife, Christian Walker, also a conservative influencer.
With Walker in a neck-and-neck race with Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, the heat has been on the Republican. Recent polls show them in a virtual tie.
Will Conservatives Care?
There’s no question about the hypocrisy of Herschel Walker. He said on a podcast that if you have “a child with a woman, even if you have to leave that woman… you don’t leave the child.” But Walker did not acknowledge his 10-year-old child until the mother took him to court over the matter. The bigger question is whether voters in Georgia will care about the GOP candidate’s indiscretions.
Shortly after the news broke, Walker appeared at an annual meeting of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative evangelical group. When discussing the recent allegations, Walker brushed them off as political mud-slinging from the left before changing the topic back to his talking points. While it’s a small sample size, his reception by the evangelical right suggests that hypocrisy may not turn conservatives against Walker.
Walker has long been a fan of Donald Trump, and the former president has returned the favor by enthusiastically endorsing the former Heisman Trophy winner. He shares Trump’s penchant for political gaffes and will have to hope to have some of Trump’s imperviousness to scandal.
An old interview has been uncovered in which Walker compared his own multiple personality disorder to Jesus Christ: “Do our Lord Jesus Christ have a mental illness because he said he’s the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? To me, those are three different personalities.” He also slipped up by referring to the other 51 states besides Georgia, and offered a truly bizarre response to the Uvalde school shooting.
Georgia’s Demographics
What might hurt Walker more than anything else is the changing nature of the Georgia electorate. It’s risky business for a political party to rest on the demographics of a state that is changing. The Peach State is among those growing fastest across the nation and becoming rapidly more diverse. From 2010 to 2020 Georgia’s population increased by 10 percent with the Black, Asian, and Hispanic population seeing large increases while the white population declined.
On paper, conventional wisdom says that this plays into the Democrats’ favor, and it has been a contributing factor to Georgia Republicans’ push in the state to suppress the vote. An East Carolina University poll puts Walker’s support from Black voters at a lowly seven percent, lower than even Governor Brian Kemp’s nine percent in his 2018 reelection victory against Democrat Stacey Abrams. In that poll’s overall tally, however, Walker and Warnock were tied at about 46 percent.
Hammering Walker for his hypocrisy may have impact on the margins, but Warnock’s candidacy depends on turning out his base in an election that may be challenging for Democrats this year.
Rep. Lauren Boebert
For far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, owning a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill has been a major promotional tool among fellow MAGA Republicans and members of the National Rifle Association (NRA). But according to Daily Beast reporter Roger Sollenberger, Boebert’s promotional tool may be in trouble: Sollenberger reports that Boebert’s restaurant is “facing an uncertain” future now that the new landlord of the property she has been renting has announced that he won’t be renewing her lease.
In an article published by the Beast on June 23, Sollenberger describes the property’s new landlord as a “marijuana retailer.”
“As it stands, the landlord has told Boebert he will revoke the restaurant’s lease at the end of August, and send Shooters packing,” Sollenberger reports. “The rest is up in the air. Boebert told The Daily Beast that she and her husband, Jayson Boebert, had been surprised to receive the notice last week announcing that their lease would not be renewed. The building’s ownership changed hands last month, she said, and now, Shooters would either have to find new digs or shut down for good.”
Sollenberger continues, “But the day after that notice arrived, an anti-Boebert political group somehow got word that the timeline was even tighter than that — two weeks, the group said, putting the possible ouster just days before Republicans hit the polls for primary day.”
Boebert’s far-right admirers in the MAGA movement have praised her for owning a restaurant, saying it shows that she isn’t part of the Washington, D.C. “elite.” But these are the same MAGA Republicans who have attacked progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City for having once worked as a bartender — a line of attack that was dumb even by MAGA standards. According to that MAGA logic, or lack thereof, owning a restaurant is respectable but tending bar is not.
Sollenberger notes that as of June 23, the Shooters Grill website is down — and that Boebert “didn’t explain exactly why her business was being kicked out” when interviewed by the Beast. According to Sollenberger, Boebert was undecided on how she would respond to the eviction.
“Boebert told The Daily Beast, at one point, that she and her husband were ‘at peace’ with ending their run, and did not plan to fight the order,” Sollenberger reports. “But as the plot thickened politically, she bought some time. Now, she says she’s entertaining two contradictory options: the original shutdown plan, or buying the building outright from the new owners. She won’t say which she and her husband are choosing until after the primary.”
Boebert’s far-right admirers in the MAGA movement have praised her for owning a restaurant, saying it shows that she isn’t part of the Washington, D.C. “elite.” But these are the same MAGA Republicans who have attacked progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City for having once worked as a bartender — a line of attack that was dumb even by MAGA standards. According to that MAGA logic, or lack thereof, owning a restaurant is respectable but tending bar is not.
Sollenberger notes that as of June 23, the Shooters Grill website is down — and that Boebert “didn’t explain exactly why her business was being kicked out” when interviewed by the Beast. According to Sollenberger, Boebert was undecided on how she would respond to the eviction.
“Boebert told The Daily Beast, at one point, that she and her husband were ‘at peace’ with ending their run, and did not plan to fight the order,” Sollenberger reports. “But as the plot thickened politically, she bought some time. Now, she says she’s entertaining two contradictory options: the original shutdown plan, or buying the building outright from the new owners. She won’t say which she and her husband are choosing until after the primary.”
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
