Herschel Walker sparks outrage by calling inflation a women’s issue: ‘They’ve got to buy groceries’

Mr Walker courts controversy again as he battles with Raphael Warnock in a close Georgia Senate race

Herschel Walker, Republican nominee for the US Senate in Georgia, is under fire again for comments suggesting that inflation hurts women more because “they’ve got to buy groceries.”

“I think there’s no doubt: crime is very, very important,” Mr Walker told a reporter at a town hall and lunch focused on women’s issues on August 19. “This economy is tough, because they’ve got to buy groceries.”

The comments, made just less than two weeks ago, came in Mr Walker’s hometown of Wrightsville. Mr Walker played football for Johnson County High School in the small town before moving on to a standout career at the University of Georgia where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1982.

Now, Mr Walker is attempting to turn his football fame into a political career and attempts to unseat Democratic Sen Raphael Warnock in November. It has been rocky so far: though the race is considered a toss-up, Mr Walker has faced questions over allegations of domestic abuse by his ex-wife and how many children he has fathered.

Mr Walker has also proven himself to be an uneven public speaker, prone to gaffes that worry national Republicans. In July, Mr Walker made a confouding series of remarks on air pollution in which he stated, “since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got we to clean that back up.”

Comments like those may be part of the reason why Mr Walker is, at this point, running behind Gov Brian Kemp as he faces Stacey Abrams in a rematch of one of the most closely watched contests of the 2018 midterms.

According to reporting from WMAZ 13, Mr Walker did not discuss the US Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v Wade at his event focused on women’s issues, but told a reporter afterward that he was pleased the Court decided to rescind the national right to abortion care. Mr Walker has previously voiced his support for a total ban on abortion with no exceptions.

According to election forecaster FiveThirtyEight, Mr Warnock — a veteran pastor at the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta who was elected in a runoff two years ago — is an extremely narrow favourite to best Mr Walker in November.