Herschel Walker couldn’t outrun the racial divide
The Herschel Walker Story of Wrightsville, Ga.: A Critical Race for a Senate and a U.S. Senate in the 21st Century
WRIGHTSVILLE, Ga. — The race for a critical Senate seat was in full motion by midsummer, but there were just a few Herschel Walker campaign signs sprinkled around his hometown.
They were planted in front of big homes with big yards, in a downtown storefront window, near the sidewalk by the Dairy Queen. There were two monuments near the Johnson County Courthouse.
The support was randomly scattered. Wrightsville was shaped by a racial divide that was visible in a dot-to-dot drawing, and is now shaping a critical political race with national implications.
The race was turned into a contest to the bottom by Walker, who ran a campaign that caused a toxic presence to linger long after the election. Walker served as an example of the ongoing misunderstanding and disrespect of the Black community by the Trump wing of the GOP, backed by Trump who personally recruited the Heisman Trophy winner to run against Warnock.
Many polls show that voters are aligning with both the Republican and Democratic candidates in key contests. Almost all major contested statewide races are being defined by a huge gender gap that could prove even larger than in the past several elections. Almost everywhere, voters in races are sharply dividing by education and generation. The racial differences in support of the parties remain as stark as ever, despite the narrowing of the partisan preferences gap between Whites and voters of color.
A closely split result would underscore how difficult it will be for either party to break out of their bitter current stalemate. Amid the worst pandemic in a century, and widespread discontent over Donald Trump’s performance and priorities as president, Democrats anticipated sweeping gains in the 2020 election. They lost their seats in the House even as Biden won the White House, and they failed to capture some of the seats they believed were within reach. Now, even amid the worst inflation 40 years, the original Republican expectations from last spring of a towering “red wave” in congressional and gubernatorial races may prove equally illusory, even if Republicans remained favored to flip control of the House.
The major data sources studying how Americans vote – including the Edison Research exit polls conducted for a media consortium that includes CNN, the Pew Research Center’s Validated Voters study and the projections by Catalist, a Democratic voter targeting firm – generally agree that in the 2018 House elections and the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, Democrats won most women and lost most men (Pew had the two sides splitting men evenly in 2018.) Democrats ran better among women in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was the first female major party presidential nominee, and in the next two years, according to these sources.
The largest lobbying group for seniors hired two firms to conduct polling in 2020 for President Donald Trump and Senate and Governor races, so as to give them the most comprehensive set of publicly available data. While Republicans led in every state, Democrats led in every state except for Wisconsin in the seven competitive Senate races that have been surveyed. In Florida the Democratic lead with women was very narrow.
Recent statewide polls by the non-partisan Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College likewise showed Democrats holding at least an eleven-point lead, and often much more than that, among women in the Senate races in Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia. Republicans led among men in each of those contests except for Arizona (where the Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is a former astronaut) and Pennsylvania (where Democratic nominee John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, has a brusque blue-collar style.) The latest CNN polls show Kelly with a double digit lead over Masto, but trailing by twenty points among men. In the CNN polls, the two genders sharply divided in the Arizona and Nevada gubernatorial races as well.
Powerful forces this year are driving apart the preferences of men and women. Most surveys show that the decision by the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to revoke the nearly 50-year constitutional right to the procedure is more important as a voting issue to women than men. With men, inflation outstrips any other concern in most polls, such as a recent national NPR/Marist poll.
The generation gap is part of the polls. The Democrats run better with younger voters than older voters. That advantage is greatest among the youngest voters aged 18-29, but now frequently extends to voters in their early 40s, the oldest Millennials. Democrats have been consistently weakest among voters in the later stages of their working careers – roughly from 45-65 – before recovering in several states to post more competitive numbers among seniors aged 65 or older, who are sensitive to Democratic appeals on Social Security, Medicare and reducing prescription drug costs, as the AARP surveys show.
Education looms as potentially the most important cleavage this year. “When you combine across nine different polls in battleground states, the education gap is almost 3 times the size of the age gap and ten points bigger than the gender gap, so I absolutely think it’s going to be a significant predictor in these races,” says Matt Hogan, a partner at Impact Research, the Democratic half of the bipartisan AARP polling team.
Republicans have been stronger among voters without a college degree. Looking across racial lines, the GOP carried most of the black voters in both years, but by a larger margin in the 2016 election. Their advantage is seen in the fact that white voters without a college degree have transitioned from being part of the Democrats to part of the Republicans. In 2020 Biden won just over one-third of those working-class Whites, compared to Clinton who won over 80% in 2016 but then fell a bit from the year before.
The executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation says that younger women are angry and engaged with the court decision which makes them the most Democratic voting group.
There is a complicated equation between college education and older White women, says Lake who conducted the polling for the study. They tend to support abortion rights but they are less likely than younger and college educated women to vote for abortion rights over inflation. Lake stated that if you don’t have an economic discussion with the non-college educated woman, then you aren’t going to get them.
The Warnock and the Abrams Era: How Democratic Candidates and Black Men Are Voting in 2020’s Midterm Elections
This seems to be possible with inflation. But large-sample surveys of Latino voters by The Washington Post/Ipsos and the Pew Research Center have not yet found evidence of big Republican inroads: each survey found Democrats holding more than three-fifths of the two party vote among Latino voters, less than earlier in this century but almost exactly their level in 2020. Nor did the Post/Ipsos poll find evidence of GOP improvement with male or non-college Latinos. Still even small Latino shifts could threaten Democrats in closely contested states. The state where Hispanics have been most affected by the COVID-related shutdowns in the gambling industry and the subsequent inflation could be Nevada, where discontent with the economy could hurt Democratic prospects.
The NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll shows some warning signs for Democrats, who are more likely to vote in this year’s races.
Black voters are least enthusiastic about voting in the mid-terms, according to the survey. Black voters have historically voted for the Democrats at a higher rate than other voters, with Black women being the most reliable voters within the party.
Heartley told NPR he’s voting for Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams in the state’s closely watched race for governor, in addition to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock for U.S. Senate.
“Black men have a voice and have a perspective,” Heartley said. It is important to acknowledge that I am a Black person first. To me, that’s what Warnock and Abrams really do.”
It’s clear that they don’t have minorities or people of color in their inner circle. They’re assuming what we want,” Brunson said. We want the same things that other voters want.
The decline in that percentage is enough to make the marginal difference in states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin, where there are diverse candidates at the top of the ticket.
Recent data suggests that candidates should focus on key issues if they want to close the enthusiasm gap with Black men.
“While this election cycle is being defined by democrats, by the threat of the other side …the threat of losing democracy, that in fact Black men are more motivated by the progress Democrats have made,” Woodbury said.
According to a survey conducted by Woodbury, 90% of Black men say that the progress that has been made has improved their lives.
A Conversation with Raphael Warnock on The Democratic Renaissance in the Southeast and Implications for the Democrat Electoral Candidate 2020
Editor’s Note: Fredrick Hicks is a political strategist and campaign expert. He served as a debate preparation partner for then-candidate Raphael Warnock in 2020. Hicks did not work for the campaign in 2022. He has a consulting firm that he owns, HEG. The views are of his own. CNN has opinions about the news.
Warnock is also well poised to be the leader of the Democratic renaissance in the southeast and to help maintain a Democratic majority in the Senate beyond 2024. He could become the second Georgian, after Jimmy Carter, to represent their party as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States should he decide to pursue higher political office.
In so doing, Warnock is now the leader of a new generation of Democratic leaders, including the likes of House Minority Leader-elect Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who are younger and more diverse than their predecessors.
Politics is included in context. The Democrats performed better than anticipated. However, in the southeast, the red wave swept over every state, washing away many powerful Democrats in the region – from Virginia down to Florida.
The most valuable asset for the Democratic Party will probably not be who runs, but who is an endorser. Should Biden decide not to run for reelection, Warnock should be the Democratic Party’s first choice to lead them back to the presidency.
Further, as of two weeks before the runoff, Warnock had raised more than $284 million since first becoming a candidate, a figure which will likely approach $300 million after the counting is finished, making him one of the most prolific non-presidential fundraisers in recent memory. In a game where votes and money are the most important things to consider, his ancestors could not have imagined that he had more of both than anyone else.
The Fourth Reconstruction: A Momentous Moment of Progress in the Struggle for Racial Justice and the Dream of Multiracial Democracy
This is a generational moment and potential opportunity to move a center-left agenda forward for the country. It will be difficult for a Republican to win the presidency if they can lose in southern states like Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.
The founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy is Peniel E. Joseph, who is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The Third Reconstruction is an analysis of the struggle for racial justice in the twenty-first century. The views expressed here are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
Walker was friendly with Trump and did not have the qualifications to become the Republican Party’s Senate nominee.
There is a symmetry to what has followed almost two years later. Trump’s election denialism and toxic rhetoric have blinkered the GOP’s political imagination and policy vision. If Warnock’s surprise win in 2021 reflected the galvanizing power of the racial and political reckoning unleashed the previous summer, this hard-fought victory represents a clear moral rejection of the kind of cynical political environment that leads to candidates such as Walker in the first place.
There is reason to fully acknowledge the pain caused by Walker’s candidacy, and also to celebrate his win as a victory for the Democratic Party. It is an important step in realizing the dream of multiracial democracy.
The 2020 Campaign: When Black Women Are the First Women to Become a Woman. If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons From Bold Women
The campaign did not comment on the attacks she has faced and she made it clear she is wary of anything that could be seen as victimhood.
“In a free country like ours, we are not victims unless we choose to be,” Ms. Haley wrote in her recent book, “If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons From Bold Women.” “We should not fall into a trap of thinking that a woman’s road to empowerment lies with someone else righting a wrong.”
While it may be difficult for Republican women to accuse another Republican of sexism, perceived derogatory comments from Democrats or the news media are another matter. On Thursday, Ms. Haley was unambiguous in her criticism of Don Lemon of CNN, calling him a “sexist middle-aged” anchor after he suggested she was past her “prime.” (He later expressed regret for the comment.).
Ms. Haley has overcome bias before. She sustained vicious and sometimes racist attacks on her way to being the first female governor of South Carolina, a daughter of Indian immigrants.
(Asked about criticisms that Mr. Trump had made sexist remarks about Ms. Haley and others, Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said the former president had “advocated for the advancement of women throughout his life.”)
In the 2020 campaign, amid a rise of female political activism in response to the Trump administration, six female candidates sought the Democratic nomination — the most ever in a presidential primary — but struggled with questions about their general election viability from voters who feared that the country was too sexist to elect a woman.
Racism and sexism are common enough on the campaign trail, and women running for office, Black or white, are peppered with concerns about their electability. Is she able to win?
According to the executive director of the foundation, a man can release his resume, and it is taken at face value. “Women have to show what they have accomplished in each position.”
An increasingly toxic political environment that often turns Black female candidates and politicians into targets on social media is making it more difficult for them to get elected. During and after the 2020 campaign, Ms. Harris faced an onslaught of racist and sexist online attacks on her gender, identity and appearance.
Kelly Dittmar, director and scholar at the Rutgers center, says black women are often asked can she win enough white voters.
