ATLANTA — In his marketing campaign for the Senate, Herschel Walker has now not hidden his previous struggles with psychological sickness and violence in previous relationships, sides of his background that he defined in a 2009 memoir and that his marketing campaign sought to deal with in its earliest days.
Now, a bunch of anti-Trump Republicans is hammering him over a kind of episodes.
In a brand new commercial working on main networks within the Atlanta media marketplace, pictures of Mr. Walker scoring a landing for the University of Georgia is juxtaposed with close-up video of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, describing how he as soon as held a gun to her temple and threatened to drag the cause.
“Do you think you know Herschel Walker?” a narrator asks. “Well, think again.”
Mr. Walker has now not denied Ms. Grossman’s accusations, announcing his violence towards her used to be a result of his struggles with psychological well being. His marketing campaign didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The commercials had been bought via a subsidiary of the Republican Accountability PAC, a bunch that grew out of Republican Voters Against Trump, which used to be established in 2020 via “never-Trump” Republicans together with the strategist Sarah Longwell and the author William Kristol. It says it has allotted $10 million in detrimental promoting and voter mobilization efforts over the following 3 months to prevent Mr. Walker and different applicants it perspectives as undeserving for place of business or a risk to democracy. They come with two applicants for governor, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Nevada.
The preliminary advert purchase towards Mr. Walker within the Atlanta media marketplace is solely $100,000. It would take way more to make critical inroads with Georgia’s huge Republican base, for whom Mr. Walker nonetheless keeps near-godlike standing from his profession as a faculty working again. But the anti-Trump crew is hoping no less than to show the heads of a few swing citizens.
Specifically, Ms. Longwell, the gang’s govt director, stated it was hoping to take advantage of what she known as an rising hole in strengthen for applicants atop Georgia’s Republican price tag. While Mr. Walker used to be working kind of even within the polls with Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat, she stated, Gov. Brian Kemp used to be outpacing his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, via a rather greater margin.
“We think that there’s a lot of these voters in Georgia who will split their ticket, and who will vote for Kemp, who will vote for Brad Raffensperger, but cannot vote for Herschel Walker,” she stated, additionally naming the Georgia secretary of state. “For a lot of these voters, it’s about understanding the difference between the football player and the person running for Senate.”
One such voter she pointed to used to be Brenda James, a Republican from Columbus, Ga., who in an interview stated she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 however President Biden in 2020, consistent with the Republican Accountability PAC. She condemned Republicans for “attempting to manipulate and use” Mr. Walker.
“Bless poor Herschel’s heart,” Ms. James stated. “The man needs help. He doesn’t need to be thrust into political limelight in the way that they are doing. Frankly, I think it’s disgusting and despicable.”
