“We held it together best we could, with f–ing duct tape and band-aids,” one Herschel Walker aide reflected.
But it did give those first staffers a clue that they were in for a battle with a less-than-forthcoming candidate—a candidate who had zero campaign experience, harbored improbable political fantasies, and was easily distracted.As the votes rolled in last month, Walker was fixated on the results from one precinct: Johnson County, home to his native town of Wrightsville.
“Pardon my french, but fuck Julie and fuck Michele Beagle,” one staffer said, likening Blanchard to “Lady Macbeth” and Beagle’s amoebic role as campaign chair to a “minister without portfolio.” “This coordinated attack by disgruntled campaign staffers is unseemly, dishonest and unethical. Julie is a professional, energetic, and unwavering defender of her husband as she should be, and Herschel was a tireless campaigner who outworked everyone. They both care deeply for our country and Georgia and I am honored to have been on their team,” Teepell said. “He would have been a great Senator.”
“That was the point we felt we lost him,” said another aide, still mystified at exactly why the moment seemed to hit so close to home. “Two weeks out from the runoff, and we couldn’t get him to understand why this was a bad idea, to go after a high school football coach when the other message was working.”
But neither the campaign—nor Walker, in the staffers’ telling—could control the most damaging, widely destructive force of all: his past.It was late August. After a summer of bruising headlines and a series of personal scandals—any one of which, in one aide’s view, “very likely would have ended it all for a typical candidate”—the Walker campaign was hoping to focus the candidate on his upcoming debate and closing arguments to voters in the critical final weeks before the election.
“He didn’t give us what we needed to defend him,” one staffer said, noting that aides had long ago stopped asking Walker whether allegations were true. “It shows how naive he was about his relationship with the media,” the person said, adding that Walker—accustomed to ESPN and Sports Illustrated—“misunderstood how tough political media” could be on politicians, especially those with a past as incendiary and abnormal as his.
On Aug. 31, that alleged fifth child’s mother—who in early July had denied Walker was the father—called this reporter out of the blue. She had just received a call from Walker himself, she said, and he had personally advised her to sue for defamation. When The Daily Beast informed staffers this week that Walker’s sister reached out to the woman who was thought to be another Walker child and had sent her money, they were stunned.It’s unclear why this July story exercised such a strong grip on Walker, especially after we iced the investigation. But it wasn’t the only time Blanchard went rogue.
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