Since news broke that Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia, had paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Democrats have been hitting Walker—and those who defend him—for hypocrisy on one of his fundamental political positions.
But nearly two weeks since the revelations, first reported by The Daily Beast, that the mother of one of Herschel Walker’s children had terminated a pregnancy at his request, one person has stayed conspicuously silent on the subject: President Joe Biden.
Unlike nearly every other high-profile member of his party, Biden, who has majorly stepped up his pitch to the Democratic base in recent weeks, has made no reference to Walker at party fundraisers, in engagements with reporters, or at public events. According to Biden allies, longtime advisers and party strategists, the decision not to nationalize Walker’s past actions is likely part political calculus—to avoid injecting himself into a local race—and part personal preference—to avoid turning a painful family crisis into campaign fodder.
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“Politics is a tough business, but at the end of the day, there’s obviously a deep understanding that we’re talking about people who have families and lives and make mistakes,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic consultant and former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “I think there’s an appreciation that in personal family business, there ought to be some things that actually are off-limits.”
The president, more than most politicians, is familiar with the weaponization of deeply personal family matters from political rivals. Just this weekend, Fox News host Sean Hannity hyped his program with a murkily obtained voicemail from Biden to his son, Hunter, asking him to seek treatment for substance use disorders.
“That is part of Joe Biden’s character: that he is someone who genuinely believes there are things that are out of bounds, particularly exploiting the personal pain of a family,” one longtime Biden ally told The Daily Beast, referring to Christian Walker, the candidate’s son, who has in recent days aggressively condemned his father’s absence from his childhood and alleged abuse of the mothers of his children. “You don’t need to exploit children and personal pain to win.”
There is, of course, the realpolitik of the risk Biden injecting himself into a tight midterm race in a state where his approval sits at just 37 percent. Biden, by dint of being president, nationalizes nearly everything he touches—which is not what Sen. Raphael Warnock, Walker’s Democratic opponent, needs in the closing weeks of the campaign.
“Georgia, Georgia, Georgia. That needs to be the message,” one Georgia-based Democratic consultant who has worked with Warnock in the past told The Daily Beast. “One of the only rounds Walker has left in the chamber—and he literally did it [on Tuesday]—is to call Reverend Warnock a lapdog for the Biden White House. No need to give that an ounce of credence.”
The more local the Georgia Senate race remains, said Lis Smith, a longtime Democratic operator, the better it is for Warnock—even if the race is now being mired in the abortion issue that has animated Democratic voters nationwide.
“It’s not Joe Biden’s job to define Herschel Walker, and it wouldn’t be particularly helpful to Sen. Warnock for the president to try to,” Smith said, adding that she would recommend Democrats stay “hyper-focused” on their own races. “It’s absolutely delusional that anyone thinks nationalizing the Walker scandal will somehow tip the Nevada or Arizona senate race toward Democrats.”
The White House communications team, like Biden, has maintained a conspicuous silence on Walker, although White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has not yet been asked about it in the briefing room, and Hatch Act restrictions prevent civil servants from weighing in too deeply on political issues. In response to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on why the president has not weighed in on Walker, a White House spokesperson cited those constraints.
Biden has, however, felt at liberty to weigh in on other congressional elections, albeit with more of focus on policy differences—most notably his concern about candidates who believe that he was not legitimately elected—than on their personal backgrounds or gaffes.
Some campaign veterans said that, given Biden’s occasional difficulty staying on-message on the issue of abortion, silence on the specifics of Walker’s actions may be for the best.
“I don’t think this White House is particularly adept at carrying purely political messages, so I don’t really know that it matters whether they engage on this or not,” said former Republican political consultant Tim Miller, who suggested that Walker can still be pointed to by Democrats more broadly as an example of why full-scale bans on abortion don’t work.
“Arguing that these guys want to ban abortion without exceptions for vulnerable women while paying for abortions themselves is compelling,” Miller said.
Despite Biden’s past difficulty discussing the issue, the president has made reproductive choice a key element in his pitch to voters ahead of the midterm elections, pointing to proposed national bans on abortion as evidence that the Republican Party has grown too extreme to be handed the reins.
Speaking to attendees of a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at a private residence in New Jersey on Friday, Biden went on an extended riff about the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade earlier this year, calling it a preview of threats to other constitutional rights down the road.
He slammed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) proposed bill banning most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation. “And some of you are docs, or have sons or daughters that are docs, and they’re worried as hell of what they can do without them being criminally liable for anything,” he said.
Those are the personal terms, Finney suggested, that Biden can use to frame the issue—rather than the specifics of Walker’s story, which is far from finished being told.
“We’re seeing the delineation between the personal pain of this family, which should be off the table, and legitimate and important policy questions,” Finney said. “And that is a line that Biden is comfortable walking.
On Wednesday morning, shortly after this story was published, Biden finally broke his silence on Walker during a chat with reporters before boarding Marine One for a campaign tour of the western states.
Asked for his long-awaited reaction to the revelations, Biden had only a single word: “Negative.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect that Graham’s bill proposed banning most abortions but allowed for exceptions.
