Here’s the latest news out of Georgia today courtesy of Public Policy Polling’s latest poll:
Georgians are about evenly split on their feelings about both Joe Biden’s performance (46% approve, 48% disapprove) and Raphael Warnock’s (43% approve, 42% disapprove.) Not a lot of minds have changed about either of them since their razor thin victories. Donald Trump fares a little worse with 43% giving him a positive favorability rating and 48% a negative one, but his hold on the GOP is secure with 83% of Republicans rating him favorably and only 11% unfavorably.
Herschel Walker looks like the strongest of the most discussed Republican candidates with the party base. He has a 72/7 favorability rating with GOP voters. By contrast Kelly Loeffler has much higher negatives, coming in at 56/21, and Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black is largely unknown with 67% of Republicans saying they don’t know enough about him to have an opinion either way.
Walker is also the strongest of the Republican hopefuls with the overall electorate. Among all voters he has a +13 favorability rating (41/28) compared to -19 for Loeffler (28/47). Black comes in even at 15/15. By comparison, Warnock’s approval stands at 43/42.
The Senate race next year is likely to once again be a tossup. Walker comes the closest to Warnock, trailing by 2 points at 48-46. Loeffler’s deficit is 47-44 and Black’s is 46-38.
Click here for the full results.
Something you should know about Hershel Walker:
Four years later, in December 2005, Cindy Grossman, Walker’s ex-wife, secured a protective order against him, alleging violent and controlling behavior.
Grossman has said she was long a victim of Walker’s impulses. When his book was released, she told ABC News that at one point during their marriage, her husband pointed a pistol at her head and said, “I’m going to blow your f’ing brains out.” She filed for divorce in 2001, citing “physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.”
In seeking protection from a judge in Dallas County, Grossman filed an affidavit from her sister, which described Walker as unwilling to accept that his former wife had begun dating another man.
Grossman told the court she got calls during that period from her sister and father, both of whom had been contacted by Walker. He told family members that he would kill her and her new boyfriend, according to Maria Tsettos, Cindy Grossman’s sister.
In an affidavit, Tsettos claimed Walker once called looking for his ex-wife while she was out with her boyfriend. Tsettos took the call and said Walker became “very threatening” when told of Grossman’s whereabouts. In Tsettos’ recollection, Walker “stated unequivocally that he was going to shoot my sister Cindy and her boyfriend in the head.”
On another occasion, Tsettos said she talked to Walker “at length” after he’d reached out to her online. He “expressed to me that he was frustrated with (Cindy) and that he felt like he had ‘had enough’ and that he wanted to ‘blow their f------ heads off,’” she recalled of the Dec. 9, 2005, exchange.
Two days later he called again and told Tsettos that he possessed a gun and planned that day to act on his threats, which he repeated in graphic language, she said.
Later that day, Walker confronted his ex-wife outside a mall when she was picking up their son from a party, according to her petition for a protective order.
In her account, she said Walker “slowly drove by in his vehicle, pointed his finger at (her) and traced (her) with his finger as he drove.”
When officers in Irving, Texas, contacted Walker, he denied that he’d made the threats, according to a police report the AP obtained through a public records request. But the sister’s account was concerning enough to police that they took for “safe keeping” a gun Walker had on the floor of his car, the report states.
A judge agreed, finding “good cause” to issue a protective order. He also barred Walker from possessing guns for a period of time.
This of course make the GOP very nervous:
Republicans from Georgia to Washington, DC, are searching for a viable candidate to mount a Senate bid in the Peach State next year, fearing that former President Donald Trump's choice, football great Herschel Walker, would implode if he ran and could cost the GOP a winnable seat.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested to allies that former Georgia senators
David Perdue and
Kelly Loeffler should take another look at running again, according to three sources familiar with the matter, after their narrow losses in January flipped the Senate to Democratic control.
McConnell, who has privately expressed his deep concerns with Walker's potential candidacy, met this summer with Loeffler and Perdue. He is also meeting this week with another potential candidate -- former Trump national security official Latham Saddler -- according to a source familiar with the situation. The source said that McConnell is likely to meet with other candidates as well.
A recent report in
the Associated Press detailing Walker's past, including that he threatened violence against his ex-wife, has only increased fears in GOP circles that his unvetted past would be devastating in a high-stakes election, where control of the Senate is at stake. The AP also found that Walker has greatly exaggerated how much revenue his company -- Renaissance Man Food Services -- earns and how many people it employs.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a top McConnell ally, seemed skeptical about a Walker candidacy.
"All I know is what I read in the paper," Cornyn said Wednesday. "I want to win that race, and so I want the best nominee. I don't know whether he's it."
Meanwhile, Senator Warnock is keeping up the fight for voting rights:
The Rev. Raphael Warnock urged the Progressive National Baptist Convention to keep fighting to protect voting rights as the historically Black denomination held its annual meeting.
“If we don’t check what they’re doing in Georgia, they’ll be able to nullify the votes and the voices of the people after they have already been cast,” Warnock, Georgia’s first Black U.S senator, said in a Wednesday (Aug. 4) keynote banquet speech at the virtual 60th annual gathering.
“This is the delta variant of Jim Crow voting laws. The only inoculation is federal legislation and the only way that happens is for God’s people to stand up. So thank you, Progressive, for standing up. Thank you for bearing witness to God’s love and God’s justice in the world.”
The PNBC is considered the “spiritual home” of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and formed as a breakaway group from the National Baptist Convention in 1961 after the NBC opposed sit-ins and other civil rights protests.
Warnock also is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, a prominent Atlanta church where King once was a co-pastor.
Prior to Warnock’s remarks, the denomination awarded former Georgia House minority leader Stacey Abrams its Freedom Award for her “unapologetic, unwavering, unyielding and undeniable courage in the face of extreme hostility to protect the voting rights of all people.”
Also, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D. NY) continues to work with Senator Warnock and U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D. WV) on a votoing rights bill:
Democrats are up against an increasingly daunting deadline to act. Lawyers have warned party leaders that any election changes would likely have to take effect in the next month to impact the 2022 balloting. If not, Democrats will be competing in several swing states based on Republican-written rules that they fear will make it harder to turn out voters of color, a key constituency.
“There is a deep sense of urgency among many of us in the caucus,” said Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia. “We are witnessing an unabashed assault on voting rights — not just suppression, but an effort to overthrow the results at the local level. And it would be irresponsible for us not to do everything we can to address that.”
The Washington Post earlier reported on Mr. Schumer’s private comments on the matter.
Mr. Warnock, who is running for election next fall, is preparing to compete in a state where Republicans moved decisively this spring to make mail-in voting more difficult, constrain early voting and shift power over elections toward the G.O.P.-led legislature. In an interview, Mr. Warnock said he was all for passing an infrastructure bill, but called it a “mistake” to do so without addressing “the infrastructure of our democracy.”
He and other progressives still hope that they can prevail on moderate holdouts like Mr. Manchin to alter the Senate rules. And they view additional votes on the Senate floor as a key to making their case that Republicans are not willing to find common ground.
As of Thursday, senior Democrats were still trying to hash out what exactly they would vote on in the coming days. Mr. Schumer met on Wednesday with a group of senators working on a scaled-back version of the For the People Act, the sprawling elections overhaul bill that Senate Republicans blocked in June. They believed they could reach agreement among themselves within days.
Click here to urge your Democratic Senator to support a carve out of the filibuster rule to protect voting rights.
Democracy is on the ballot and we need to get ready to keep Georgia Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Warnock and these Georgia Democrats campaigns: