J.D. Vance, Dr. Oz, and Herschel Walker
Which of these Trump-endorsed celebrity candidates is not like the others?
In all likelihood, the GOP will retake the House of Representatives next January. It’s less clear that it will retake the Senate.
The prospects for doing so depend to a significant degree on the outcomes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. If the Republican candidate wins in all three states, it’s very likely the GOP will gain control of the Senate. Republican losses in two of the three races might well enable the Democrats to maintain control.
Donald Trump endorsed candidates in all three contests — J.D. Vance in Ohio, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and Herschel Walker in Georgia. Vance and Walker are now the Republican nominees. The outcome of Oz’s race is yet to be determined.
These three Trump-endorsed candidates have one thing in common. They are celebrities — a fact that, I assume, has something to do with Trump’s endorsement.
But one of the three is not like the other two. Vance and Oz, though not normal Senate candidates, are distinguished in ways relevant, as I see it, to serving in the Senate. Walker is not.
If elected, Vance will be one of the Senate’s brightest members. He graduated from Ohio State in two years, graduated from Yale Law School, wrote an excellent best-selling autobiography, and has enjoyed success as a venture capitalist.
Dr. Oz possesses both intellectual fire power and special expertise. He’s a graduate of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He was a cardiothoracic surgeon and a professor at Columbia University. And, of course, he hosted a hugely successful television show on health and medical matters.
Herschel Walker was a great football player, but lacks credentials that, in my view, make him fit for the Senate.
Walker starred for the University of Georgia. His campaign initially claimed he graduated from there, but that claim is false.
One can be a good Senator without having a college degree, but a candidate ought not falsely claim to possess one. And I see nothing in Walker’s resume that suggests he’s Senate material. Instead, I see hints of mini-scandals.
Can Walker talk intelligently about the issues? I hoped to find out when I watched a debate among the GOP candidates in the Georgia Senate primary, but Walker did not participate.
He didn’t need to. Holding a huge lead in the polls, Walker had nothing to gain from the debate, other than getting some experience in case he debates his Democratic opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, which he has agreed to do.
When Walker does appear in public, he displays little familiarity with important issues. In the appearances I’ve seen, he largely avoids substance, preferring to talk football instead.
When forced to address substance, he fails to impress. Asked about his position on the infrastructure legislation, he responded: "Until I see all the facts, you can't answer the question. I think that's what is totally unfair to someone like myself to say, 'What are you going to vote for'?"
But the facts relating to the legislation weren’t secret and I’m aware of no other candidate seeking to break into Congress who couldn’t say how he or she would vote on infrastructure.
Walker has also sounded incoherent (or at least hard to follow) on the topic of new gun control legislation.
As noted above, Walker has said he will debate Warnock, his Democratic opponent, who is a world-class talker. I wouldn’t be surprised if Walker eventually pulled out based on some sort of dispute about the terms.
Both options — debating Warnock and pulling out — are unattractive. David Perdue refused to debate Jon Ossoff last year, to his detriment. But getting trounced by Warnock in a debate could be highly detrimental, too.
Politico quotes a Georgia Republican political consultant who perceives little risk in Walker’s inarticulateness. He predicts that Walker’s voters “will say what they said about Trump quite often, ‘Well, I know what he was trying to say.’”
I agree. But the question is whether voters not firmly committed to Trump and/or Walker — likely a majority of the Georgia electorate — will react that way.
For what it’s worth, I see a significant risk that Georgia voters will decline to elect a Senate candidate who can’t (or won’t) debate the issues intelligently. If 2022 is as big a Republican year as some think it will be, Walker’s chances are pretty good, nonetheless. Otherwise, the GOP may be heading for yet another Georgia disappointment.
I should add, however, that Mitch McConnell has been backing Walker, making him that rare candidate this cycle with a seal of approval from both the Minority Leader and the ex-President.
McConnell is probably a better judge of a Republican senatorial candidate’s viability than just about anyone in America. Of Walker, McConnell says:
He’s a quick study and very good at bridging the divisions down there that have been on full display for the last couple of years, which I think is really important going into the general.
The first part of this statement seems like smoke blowing. The second part may be an insight.
Perhaps McConnell understood all along that Walker was going to be his party’s nominee and simply decided to hop on board to provide as much help as he can. But maybe he sees more merit in Walker than the ex-football star has been given credit for.
If so, I hope McConnell is right.
To play devil's advocate here: Being a good talker is a political advantage, but if Walker is elected, it would not surprise me if he turns out to be the best Senator of the three.
One piece of evidence for this is actually Walker's infrastructure answer. I think the answer has much to commend it both substantively and politically.
Substantively, it's arguably a somewhat responsible answer. I think a serious person probably would study a bill rather differently if he or she were actually going to vote on it. In this instance, there are also likely some considerations that would come into play if it was a real vote that do not go purely to the merits of the bill but that a Senator would need to assess seriously in a way an intelligent bystander (let alone a political candidate) wouldn't. For example, even if he had some doubts about it, a Senator would want to know what the bill means for his State before actually voting. He might also want to make a solid assessment whether Manchin and/or Sinema and/or some Republicans really needed it to pass in order to feel comfortable opposing Build Back Better. He might also want to have a sense whether his vote was necessary to enable or prevent passage. All of these kinds of prudential considerations seem perfectly reasonable for a Senator to take into account and are hard to assess if one is not already a Senator. I suspect something like them underlies Walker's non-answer answer.
I also think the answer is some evidence for Sen. McConnell's assessment of him, as I don't think it actually matters what Walker thinks of the infrastructure bill as a practical matter, and there were certainly people pretty would up about it on both sides of the question in the party. So why fan the flames on it by taking a position one way or the other?
I agree with Paul's take here. It has never made sense to me how/why Herschel Walker would run for Senate and why anyone would vote for him. He's inarticulate, uninformed and a B or C list "celebrity". He DOES have name recognitiion. And, yes, I'm aware that I just described DJT''s qualifications in 2016 too.