The race between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia may determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. It will also show how much voters care these days about character. My guess: more than the cynics say.
It’s certainly true that, as recently as 10 years ago, America would not have had a debate about whether a candidate for Senate could survive credible allegations of paying for a girlfriend’s abortion and then lying about it, or the disclosure of the existence of two previously unacknowledged children, or the candidate’s own admission of past domestic violence. His polling would have plummeted. His party would have concluded that he had no chance of winning and that continued support for him would bring it discredit.
But the abortion accusation, which Walker denies, does not seem to have cost him many points in polls, even as he continues to advocate a ban on abortion. “Politics, it seems, is too important these days for questions of character to matter,” writes Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen. Donald Trump got elected president in 2016, after all, even after the “Access Hollywood” tape.
