Though the Republican nominee in Georgia’s Senate race has yet to be decided, odds are that former NFL star Herschel Walker will be the one to win the May 24th primary and go on to battle Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock in the fall election.
Because of that very real possibility, and also because Walker has received the endorsements of high-profile Republicans like Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump, the attacks on him have been non-stop, not just from Warnock’s campaign but also from their affiliated special interest allies, the mainstream media, and even some of Walker’s GOP primary opponents. All of them are using Walker’s admitted past mental health struggles and an allegedly “turbulent” marriage (and post-marriage) that ended in divorce in 2002 to paint Walker as unstable and unfit to hold a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Interestingly enough, though Warnock’s campaign undeniably stands to benefit the most from such attacks and no doubt has helped feed the media monster behind the scenes regarding Walker’s storied and tumultuous history – much of which is literally an open book, when it comes to Warnock himself his lawyers recently filed a joint motion along with his ex-wife Oulèye Ndoye requesting to have past and future pleadings sealed and family court hearings closed in an ongoing child custody dispute so they can’t be used as political fodder by his opponents or those who support them.
“The parties show that Respondent’s opposition is utilizing the public records in order to gain some political advantage or gain, but more importantly said pleadings can harm the parties’ children who are by nature targets of the Respondent’s opposition,” the motion read, while claiming the children at the center of the custody battle may be “harmed by any unstable person who sympathizes” with Warnock’s political opposition.
The Free Beacon, which was the first to obtain the court motion, also reported on the reasons Ndoye took Warnock to court earlier this year:
Ndoye reopened the dispute in a February court filing, accusing Warnock of neglect of his children and failure to pay for childcare, leaving her “financially strapped.” Ndoye claimed Warnock refused to pay for childcare costs that she was forced to shoulder when he failed to show up for his custody days. She also said he “routinely neglects” to give her notice when he is traveling out of town during his visitation days, and instead has the children “picked up from school by friends and [leaves] them with various babysitters overnight” while he is away.[…]This is not the first time Warnock has sought court action to keep his legal quarrels under wraps. He also had his divorce records sealed in 2019, shortly before he ran for Senate.
In December 2020, just a few weeks before Georgia voters headed to the polls to vote in the race between Warnock and then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) and also the race between Democrat Jon Ossoff and then-Sen. David Perdue (R), Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired never-before-seen bodycam footage of a disturbing incident from March of that same year that involved Warnock, Ndoye, and a police officer who was called to the scene.
Ndoye alleged Warnock had run over her foot as she was trying to talk to him about what Ndoye said involved a disagreement over allowing her to take their two young children on an overseas trip for a family funeral. The children were said to be present at the time of the argument. When he was asked whether he ran over her foot, Warnock told the officer “I do not think so.”
“This man’s running for United States Senate, and all he cares about right now is his reputation,” Ndoye stated in the video. “I’ve been very quiet about the way that he is for the sake of my kids and his reputation.”
“I’ve tried to keep the way that he acts under wraps for a long time, and today he crossed the line,” she continued. “So that is what is going on here. And he’s a great actor. He is phenomenal at putting on a really good show.”
A report was filed but no charges were filed.
As I said at the time, it was one of those things people had to watch and decide for themselves as to who they believed. Their divorce had not yet been finalized, and these things can get heated and ugly even long after the ink is dry on the paperwork.
For better or for worse, when you’re a candidate for public office and you have these types of skeletons in your closet (especially if they are recent), they are inevitably going to be used against you whether you like it or not. That’s just the nature of the beast.
It strikes me as odd but not exactly surprising that Warnock would seek to keep his own pleadings and court hearings private at the same time his campaign is undoubtedly mining Walker’s past including digging further into the details of his relationship with his ex-wife to use against him in a general election campaign. As painful as these things are, Warnock and his supporters can’t have their cake and eat it, too, on this.
In gleefully pulling the purported skeletons out of Walker’s closet, the ones on Warnock are going to resurface as well (and then some), and by the looks of things as they stand now, it may just turn out that the buyer’s remorse Georgia voters are already expressing over Warnock will be strong enough to give him a very different and much less satisfying outcome in November than the one he saw in January 2020.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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