The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is out with a new ad attacking Republican Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker over allegations of domestic abuse.
The ad, entitled “Troubling But True,” features several women disturbed by information claiming Walker once pointed a gun at his ex-wife.
“According to court reports obtained by the Associated Press walker’s ex-wife secured a protective order against him,” the ad begins with audio of a news report. The reporter continues, “Walker pointed a gun to her head and threatened to blow her ‘f-ing brains out.’”
Court records show Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy DeAngelis Grossman, was granted a protective order against Walker in 2005, according to People Magazine.
“I find it abhorrent,” one woman reacts in the ad. “Very crazy, not not a well man,” adds another older woman with a look of shock washed over her face.
“It makes me feel, quite honestly, unsafe,” a woman sitting on a door step with a tablet in her hand says. “No one should be going to that level of violence and anger,” another woman, sitting at a cafe, adds.
“I don’t know how we can feel safe with someone like that in power,” the first woman questions.
The ad ends with a narrator questioning, “how could we have a Senator with that history of violence and anger?”
“We can’t,” the older woman concludes.
Walker claims he doesn’t remember the threats due to suffering from dissociative identity disorder, which, according to his 2008 book Breaking Free, caused him to develop several alter egos to cope with bullying as a child.
This isn’t the first time the issue has surfaced. An ad in early August, paid for by The Republican Accountability Project PAC, shows interview footage from after Walker’s book was released of Grossman describing her attacks.
The footage, edited together to condense various claims, includes statements alleging Walker’s “eyes would become very evil,” as well as a “few choking things with him” and the gun to the head claim.
Since then, news has also come out claiming that Walker, in 2009, paid for an ex-girlfriend to have an abortion. The Daily Beast report, and subsequent reporting from The New York Times, included documents from the woman, who wasn’t named to protect her identity, to support the claim — a $700 check from Walker, a receipt from the clinic where she underwent the procedure and a get well card signed, “H.”
After the anti-abortion Walker forcefully denied the allegation, his son, Christian Walker, took to Twitter to condemn his father’s actions. In one post, he evoked similar claims of violence.
“You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence,” the younger Walker wrote in one tweet.
Despite mounting scandal plaguing Walker’s campaign, he remains locked in a tight race against incumbent U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock. A recent Quinnipiac University poll taken after the abortion allegations surfaced showed Warnock leading Walker by 7 percentage points, but other polls have shown Warnock’s lead within just a couple points of his Republican challenger, and Republicans aren’t backing down from their support.
The race as garnered national attention as both Democrats and Republicans fight to wrest control over the now-tied U.S. Senate. Warnock’s 2021 election was one of two Georgia Senate races that delivered a tie in the chamber to Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote.