Herschel Walker files paperwork to run as GOP candidate in Senate race

Donald Trump favorite Walker and his team will now be able to start raising money to vie for the seat.

Former football star Herschel Walker has filed the paperwork to run for the Senate as a Republican in the state of Georgia. 

Team Herschel Inc. was established on Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission. Walker and his team will now be able to start raising money for the 2022 Senate race to vie for the seat currently held by Rev. Raphael Warnock, who won in a special election early this year. 

A longtime Texas resident, Walker, 59, registered to vote in the state of Georgia on Aug. 17, just over one week ago, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

He listed his residence as a home in Buckhead owned by his wife, Julie Blanchard. 

Former NFL athlete Herschel Walker has filed the paperwork to run for the Senate as a Republican in the state of Georgia. (Photo by the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

Walker was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, who said in March via an email, “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia?”

“He would be unstoppable,” Trump added of his 2020 appointee to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. “Just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL. He is also a GREAT person. Run Herschel, run!”

According to a report from Associated Press, Walker has struggled with mental illness in the past, including being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder.

Additionally, in 2005, Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, filed a protective order against him where she alleged a long history of domestic violence and controlling behavior. She said that at one point, he pointed a pistol at her head.

In this 2018 photo, Herschel Walker (left) and then-President Donald Trump (right) talk as they watch participants during the White House Sports and Fitness Day in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images)

Her sister, Maria Tsettos, testified that he also threatened her as well. 

The Georgia Senate seat is expected to be one of the most hotly contested seats of the 2022 elections. Several other Republicans have entered the race, including Gary Black, the state’s agriculture commissioner. 

Walker won the Heisman Trophy at the University of Georgia in 1982 and has been considered by many as the greatest college football player of all time, inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999. The running back played in the NFL from 1983 to 1997, where he rushed for 13,787 yards, placing him seventh on the NFL’s all-time career rushing list.

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