Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott is stepping up to defend anti-abortion GOP U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker following reports that he got a woman pregnant and paid for her abortion.
The story, reported in The Daily Beast, claimed Walker urged the unnamed woman to have an abortion. The woman produced a “get well” card Walker signed, a receipt from the abortion clinic and a photo of Walker’s $700 check reimbursing her for the cost.
Scott, who is in charge of U.S. Senate Republicans’ campaign efforts, dismissed the story as a desperate fabrication by Democrats.
“When the Democrats are losing, as they are right now, they lie and cheat and smear their opponents. That’s what’s happening right now. They know they are on the verge of losing the Senate, and they know that Herschel Walker is winning, so they have cranked up the smear machine,” he said in a prepared statement.
“This is just like the smears they attempted against Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, and it will not work. Herschel has denied these allegations and the NRSC and Republicans stand with him, and Georgians will stand with him too.”
Scott’s take stands in stark contrast to that of Walker’s own son, Christian Walker, who wrote on Twitter that his father “lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples (sic) lives” and accused his father of lying and acting like he was “some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’”
Walker, for his part, denies the allegations. In a Twitter post, he brushed off the claim as “disgusting, gutter politics.”
“This is another repugnant hatchet job from a democrat activist disguised as a reporter who has obsessively attacked my family and tried to tear me down since this race started,” the elder Walker tweeted. “He’s harassed friends of mine, asking if I fathered their children. He’s called my children ‘secret’ because I didn’t want to use them as campaign props in a political campaign.”
Walker is running to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock in an election cycle where abortion rights are in the spotlight due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — the two prior court decisions that have served as the framework for abortion rights in the United States for decades.
Most polls show Warnock leading the race, though the end result is expected to be close. A poll from Fox News released last week shows Warnock up 46%-41%, which falls within the measure’s 3.5-percentage-point margin of error.
Georgia has been purpling of late, electing two Democratic U.S. Senators and delivering its electoral votes to Joe Biden in the 2020 cycle. Warnock won election with 51% of the vote two years ago.
