For someone who goes out of his way to talk about the irresponsibility of Black fathers, Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker needs to take a good long look at himself.
Tonight when Walker faces off against his opponent, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, on a debate stage in Savannah, Georgia, it’s likely his hypocrisy will come back to haunt him—specifically the hypocrisy of saying in a 2020 podcast that a “fatherless home is a major, major problem.”
Here’s the issue: According to reporting from Daily Beast political reporter Roger Sollenberger, Walker has been paying substantially less child support than he should have for one of his three sons and hasn’t seen the child since 2016.
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According to Walker’s personal financial discloser, the Trump-backed candidate is worth between $29 million and $62 million, but Walker only pays the woman who had his child a scant $3,500 a month in child support. This is the same woman who told The Daily Beast last week that the pro-life Christian candidate, who supports a federal ban on abortion, paid her to have an abortion in 2009. The woman also shared with the outlet the details of her child support payments from Walker.
When The Daily Beast asked several attorneys about the support Walker’s son’s mother was receiving, the consensus was that she was basically being cheated.
Marilyn Chinitz, a partner at Blank Rome, a family attorney, said bluntly, “This is basically a kiss-off agreement.” Adding, “My concern with this agreement is that it is in my view deficient in protecting the best interest of the child. That’s what the courts are concerned with … The father, who is clearly a wealthy individual, has the financial wherewithal. All this provides for in my view is a bare minimum amount of support.”
Walker has babbled on and on about so-called deadbeat dads. In one appearance, Walker said that if you have “a child with a woman, even if you have to leave that woman … you don’t leave the child.”
But back to Walker’s paltry child support.
Imran Ansari, a partner at Aidala Bertuna & Kamins, told The Daily Beast: “Accepting a child support settlement of $3,500 per month, without looking into the financial reality of the father, while above the state minimum, could be considered a misstep.”
A founding partner of Berkman Bottger Newman & Schein LLP, Barry Berkman, said the woman “Definitely got the worst of the deal,” adding, “While it doesn’t reach the level of unconscionability, it is certainly low.”
The mom was enrolled in Columbia University in graduate school, and at the time, she tells The Daily Beast, she had an income of less than $16,000. She says she accepted Walker’s offer because she didn’t want to appear to be the kind of person who juiced a celebrity for all that they had.
The attorneys tell The Daily Beast that Walker’s offer didn’t account for the cost of living increases, college tuition for his son, tutoring, or any kind of extracurricular activities, to name a few.
The best part is that despite all of the financial disparity this woman must have had and her son’s father’s immense wealth he refused to share, she has opened a business and has a thriving career.
Once again, Walker shows his true character: a total hypocrite.
According to Merriam-Webster, “the word hypocrite came into English from the Greek word hypokrites, which means ‘an actor’ or ‘a stage player.’” It will be interesting to see what role Walker plays on tonight’s debate stage.
Stay tuned.
After an eruption of even more scandals among Republican Senate candidates, FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich returns to The Downballot to discuss the effect these sorts of scandals can have on competitive races; whether Democrats stand a chance to keep the House; and the different ways pollsters create likely voter models.