After Walker’s “Rocky Rollout,” Infighting Front and Center in #GASEN Primary

With Walker’s “rocky rollout” unsettling Georgia Republicans, fellow GOP Senate candidates and activists used the opening to take aim at Trump’s hand-picked politician. Here’s the latest:

• Walker’s “rocky rollout” and “empty campaign calendar” are “unsettling some party activists” while many Georgia Republicans are “growing impatient.” As the Washington Examiner reports, Walker has held “no public events, nor has Walker granted media access to local Georgia press, although he has spoken with Fox News, Fox radio and, over Labor Day weekend, Fox Sports, for a total of five interviews.” 

• Fellow Republicans rushing to redefine the Trump-tapped candidate “as a political opportunist and damaged goods.”  A campaign spokesman for Gary Black called out Walker’s failure to show up and meet with Georgia voters, saying that  “there is a problem with Herschel that his team does not want us to know about” and comparing Walker winning the primary to “an extinction-level event.” 

• Conservatives in Georgia aren’t happy with Walker’s “beneath the radar” campaign. Since announcing his Senate bid two weeks ago, Walker has done “a whole lot of nothing.” He’s “said little” about his policy positions publicly, “declined to comment” on the U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion that each of his GOP rivals praised, and “skipped a major GOP gathering in Middle Georgia” that Gov. Brian Kemp and all three of Walker’s U.S. Senate rivals attended. His first and only event in Georgia? A closed-door fundraiser with a handful of high-dollar conservative donors. As CNN notes, Walker’s early campaign strategy to get through the primary is to “stay out of sight and severely limit his exposure to voters and the media” in order to limit mistakes — but the absentee approach is already frustrating Republicans. “I don’t know a lot about him,” said Julie Woods Hill, an Alpharetta activist at the GOP Fish Fry Walker no-showed. “There’s a lot of uncertainty still. Obviously, he’s not here and I just don’t know where he stands on the issues.”

• GOP is divided. Last week, former President Trump came out with a formal endorsement of Walker. But conservative radio host and 2020 Senate candidate Doug Collins, one of Trump’s biggest supporters, joined former Governor Nathan Deal in endorsing Gary Black — saying, “I don’t care who else is running, I’m supporting Gary Black.”  Meanwhile, Representatives Buddy Carter and Marjorie Taylor Greene doubled down on their support for Walker, even as the newly-minted candidate angers conservatives with his recent no-show from a major Georgia GOP event. 

###