Yahoo News Former NFL player Herschel Walker to run in the 2022 Georgia Senate race against Democrat Raphael Warnock
Former NFL player Herschel Walker will run in the 2022 Georgia Senate race against Raphael Warnock.
Walker, a standout football player at the University of Georgia in the 1980s, is a staunch ally of former President Trump.
Georgia will be a key state for Republicans as they seek to regain a Senate majority next year.
Former NFL player Herschel Walker will run for the US Senate in Georgia against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Walker's entry into the race gives the GOP its highest-profile candidate to date in what will be a marquee Senate race in one of the most politically-competitive states in the country.
While Walker hasn't immediately commented on his candidacy, he has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and recently registered to vote in the Peach State after years of living in Texas.
A University of Georgia standout and winner of the 1982 Heisman Trophy, Walker is a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, who has publicly encouraged him to jump into the race.
The other Republicans currently in the race include state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black and two military veterans - Latham Saddler and Kelvin King.
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A contest between Warnock and Walker would feature a rare Senate election between two prominent Black candidates in a Southern state where the Black electorate will play a decisive role in the outcome of the election.
Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, was a first-time candidate who became one of the Democratic Party's strongest recruits in the 2020 Senate cycle, defeating appointed GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a high-stakes January 2021 runoff election.
With Republicans angling to win back control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, the race will be closely watched, especially as Democrats seek to maintain their foothold in a state where they once struggled for electoral relevancy but have found some success.
In the 2020 presidential election, now-President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the state by roughly 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million votes cast, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992.
In the January 2021 Senate runoff elections, Warnock's electoral win was augmented by the victory of Democrat Jon Ossoff, who defeated incumbent GOP Sen. David Perdue in a separate runoff election for a full term.
This story has been updated.
Read the original article on Business Insider
