Race matters in the Warnock vs. Walker Senate race

The Thursday Thoughts!

One of the first headlines that I read this morning declared that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga) trails Republican challenger Herschel Walker 49-45 in the latest The Hill/Emerson College Poll.

Walker (left) and Sen. Warnock

In full disclosure, Sen. Warnock was a senior at Morehouse College during my freshman year and in 2020, he appeared on my HP Podcast prior to receiving my endorsement. 

Cognizant that the American political construct is primarily a two-party system, there was no question that Sen. Warnock would draw a Republican challenger this year. My issue, however, is not the “what”—but the “who,” as in Herschel Walker. 

Herschel has been a football player and a fighter…That’s it…

Now, I have never had the opportunity to meet Mr. Walker so for all that I know, he could very well could be a kind man. But I have had countless opportunities to watch Walker since he burst onto the scene as a Heisman Trophy winning running back for the Georgia Bulldogs 42 years ago, and what has always stood out about him, far more than his athletic gifts, is his inability to express himself during interviews. To make it more plain, as my Great Grandpa Charlie Williams used to say, Walker “grins too much” and projects as a buffoon who lacks the desire to improve his knowledge, wisdom, or diction. 

Now, some may ask, "Hobbs, what does that matter?" Well, intelligence surely matters and while I know some articulate fools (and a few inarticulate but still bright people), the anecdotal evidence is that such are statistical anomalies. Meaning, more often than not, what you see or hear is what you get and with Walker, I see a man whose fame arose from his physical talents—not his mental acumen. 

Intelligence also matters because the U.S. Senate simply does not need another Tommy Tuberville, the Republican Senator from Alabama (and former Auburn University football coach) who is two quarters short of a dollar, too! When I hear Sen. Tuberville justifying Russia's invasion of Ukraine because "Putin needs farmland to feed his people," or Sen. Marsha Blackburn's (R-Tn) painful inability to distinguish the Constitution from the Declaration of Independence, I know good and well that we don’t need Herschel Walker, a man who comically struggled to explain the theory of evolution at a recent rally, in the Senate!

Yet and still, here we are—several months from election day—with Walker holding a slight lead over a brilliant, articulate, and dedicated public servant like Sen. Warnock?

Now, this blog is not to suggest that Walker will prevail—polls often get it wrong!  But it is worth asking how a class clown can be used to depose the figurative class valedictorian by GOP power brokers? Even worse is when the class clown is a man of color who is wholly underqualified to serve, but more than willing to "yessa massa" his way into a position that's far beyond his depth.

Well, in the latest example of the proverbial “nothing new under the sun” moment, lest we forget that nearly 12 years after President Rutherford B. Hayes removed the last Federal troops from the South and ended formal Reconstruction, Southern state legislatures began systematically attacking the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, one which mandated suffrage “to all qualified male voters regardless of color.” 

Alas, there was a loophole within the Fifteenth Amendment that would nullify Black voting power for nearly 80 years, which was the question of what constituted a “qualified” voter.  

In 1889, Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts filed a “force bill” that would have addressed this loophole and demanded federal oversight of elections; the measure passed the Senate, but died in the House following a strong filibuster from Southern congressmen. The next year, the State of Mississippi called a constitutional convention for the express purpose of eliminating Black voting rights, with an op/ed in the state’s largest newspaper, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, bluntly opining that the convention was called “to restrict Negro suffrage.”

Among the Jim Crow voting measures passed were poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests. Showing their true colors, the the State of Missisipppi allowed local supervisors of elections the discretion to permit illiterate white males to cast ballots.

Sadly, Mississippi's Jim Crow leaders convinced Isaiah Montgomery, a formerly enslaved man turned wealthy business owner (and the convention’s lone Black delegate), to declare his full support of the Jim Crow voting reforms! Delegate Montgomery publicly suggested that the reforms would “purify the ballot,” but his private (and honorable) desire was to sacrifice Black voting rights if it would keep Ku Klux Klan violence at bay.

Isaiah Montgomery

While Klan violence surely did not end, Montgomery's validation still was deemed a coup for white Mississippi Democrats who were vastly outnumbered at the time by Black Republican voters. To compare the impact of those new Jim Crow laws, in 1868, nearly 87,000 Black men (97 percent of Mississippi’s voting age population) were registered; by 1892, two years after the convention, only 9,000 blacks remained on the rolls.  

Mississippi’s success in ending Black voting rights was so pronounced that South Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia soon enacted similar measures to eliminate Black voting rights—measures that remained intact across the South until President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. 

Now, the erudite Sen. Raphael Warnock knows this history quite well, and he has worked hard to push back against “Jim Crow 2.0” measures that are frustrating Black voters in 2022. Conversely, not only is it clear that Herschel Walker has never mentioned the plight of modern Black voters, but he is more than happy to play the puppet for right wingers who wish to use his fame and name to dilute Black voting power.

Now, I doubt that Walker has the discipline to read more than a Tweet, thus, my further doubt that he will read this blog or ponder how he is being used by the GOP. But my sincere hope is that those of you who love to read—and think—will go online and do your parts to contribute to Sen. Warnock's campaign!

Thank you for subscribing to the Hobbservation Point—have a wonderful Thursday!