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GA-Sen: Mother Jones' David Corn, "Herschel Walker (R) Should Release His Medical Records" [1]
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Date: 2022-11-19
Herschel Walker (R. GA)
Candidates medical records have become a center of focus in some of the races in both this past midterms election and the 2020 Presidential Election. We saw the mainstream press try to make a big ordeal about medical record transparency in the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania this past year because U.S. Senator-Elect John Fetterman (D. PA) had been recovering from a stroke. But David Corn at Mother Jones highlights how there wasn’t a larger call from the press for U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R. GA) to release his medical records. Corn makes a pretty compelling argument that there is a bigger case to be made about Walker’s mental health background and for Georgia voters to know more about this:
Walker’s case is different. He has acknowledged his personal history of violent and dangerous behavior. He played Russian roulette with a loaded gun and fantasized about shooting a delivery man who was late. “It would be no different from sighting at the targets I’d fired at for years—except for the visceral enjoyment I’d get from seeing the small entry wound and the spray of brain tissue and blood—like a Fourth of July firework—exploding behind him,” Walker wrote in his 2008 book, Breaking Free: My Life With Dissociative Identity Disorder. That’s disturbing. And his ex-wife reports that he once held a gun to her head—an episode Walker says he doesn’t remember. Walker claims these actions were all the result of DID, the mental disease he wrote about, which creates independently functioning identities within a single person. Once known as Multiple Identity Disorder—and popularized in popular culture by such movies as Sybil and The Three Faces of Eve—the very existence of this disorder is controversial, with many health experts questioning whether it is a legitimate diagnosis. Walker, though, has cited it as an explanation (or excuse) for previous alarming behavior. That wasn’t me; my alters did it. But he asserts there’s now no reason to worry; he has been cured of DID. These statements have escaped much scrutiny during Walker’s Senate run. As my colleague Abby Vesoulis noted in a superb piece on Walker and DID, Despite the fact that Walker’s Senate race is one of the closest and most consequential in the nation, his DID diagnosis seldom gets more than a brief mention in media reports. Experts have largely avoided commenting publicly on Walker’s mental health, or on whether it would impact his ability to carry out the high-stress, high-profile job of serving as a United States senator. In interviews with Mother Jones, several psychiatric professionals were hesitant to comment on Walker’s condition. Some were even reluctant to discuss DID more generally. Whether Walker had DID and whether it was responsible for his violent past, his claim of being cured warrants examination. He has proclaimed that he is “better now than 99 percent of the people in America,” and has compared his DID experience to a broken bone: “Just like I broke my leg; I put the cast on. It healed.” Not so fast. As Vesoulis reported, Dr. David Spiegel, the associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, who is not one of the DID skeptics, told her that DID generally doesn’t just disappear without serious, long-term treatment. “There are no quick fixes,” he said. “It doesn’t just evaporate.” Yet Walker has shared few details about his treatment. In his book, he credited Jerry Mungadze, who has a Ph.D. in counselor education (not a medical degree) from the University of North Texas, for his recovery. But, as Vesoulis wrote, Mungadze’s approach is unlike that of many mental health professionals. In 2000, he provided practitioners at a presentation with a checklist of questions they should ask patients. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one question read: “Have they willingly, under any circumstances, vowed to follow Satan?” He also supports the use of exorcism as a therapy option, though he acknowledges it shouldn’t be the “initial step” in DID treatment. “Exorcism has a role in the treatment of some DID clients, whose clinical picture shows the need for it,” Mungadze wrote in the book, Critical Issues in the Dissociative Disorders Field: Six Perspectives from Religiously Sensitive Practitioners. Regarding Walker’s treatment, the Journal-Constitution noted, [E]xperts say that DID is complicated, often requiring years of therapy. Sometimes even after patients have learned to manage the condition they must still seek out help at various points in their lives. Walker’s campaign refused to answer questions about his current treatment or whether he still has symptoms. There is no way for a voter to tell if Walker’s extreme conduct was truly caused by DID, nor if he has actually been cured. How extensive was his treatment? Aside from Mungadaze, did any credentialed mental health expert diagnose and treat Walker for DID? Does he still experience symptoms? If elected senator, might one of his supposed alters take control of him during a Senate vote or at some other important moment? Discussing someone’s mental condition can be a sensitive matter, and the stigma surrounding mental illness has been a longstanding problem. But Walker has raised this issue, which begs the question: Could he be using a purported but baseless DID diagnosis as a convenient excuse for conduct that should disqualify him from high office? There is one simple way for Walker to answer such questions. He could release his health records. If he doesn’t want to do a full-scale dump of private material, he could follow the McCain example and make his records available to reporters. Otherwise, how can voters be assured that he’s not hiding behind a controversial medical diagnosis, and that he has been successfully treated for his violent or erratic behavior so that it would not reocur should he become a senator?
To put more attention on this, Corn released a new piece today that Walker is also proving to be a huge hypocrite when it comes to transparency:
Once upon a time, Walker himself agreed with the notion that political candidates—at least those running for president—ought to demonstrate that they are mentally and physically fit to hold office. In September 2020, Walker, then almost a year away from announcing his Senate bid, responded to the popular right-wing talking point that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was not mentally acute enough to serve in the White House. Walker proposed that Biden (and Donald Trump) submit to exams to determine each candidate’s physical and mental health. In a tweet, Walker, a former football star, declared, I was also thinking then when I played how they used to—we had to take physical and mental tests to make sure that we can take the grueling tasks that we had to do. And now, since everyone is questioning Vice President Biden, I think that”ll be fair to both candidates if before they debate. I think both candidates need to take a physical and mental test to see if they’re up to the task of being president of the United States ’cause this is a grueling, tough position. You know, I’m not saying I’ve ever been president, but I can tell you it’s tough, mentally and physically. So I think it’s only fair that both candidates take a physical and mental test to see if they’re able to do the job they;’e gonna be required to do. Though the standards may be different for a president than a senator, Walker’s reasoning certainly applies to his own case. He has contended that he once was burdened by a mental disease that led to dangerous conduct and violent thoughts and that could hamper his performance in office. What might happen were he to be elected a senator and his alternative and violent personalities return?
Right now, Warnock and Walker are focused on turnout and they have different approaches:
Mr. Warnock’s campaign is focusing on turning out Georgia’s Democratic base while garnering support from people who voted for Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, but did not support Mr. Walker, particularly those in Atlanta’s suburbs. The campaign is also aiming to cut into Mr. Walker’s gains in conservative counties that he narrowly won. Mr. Walker, however, is spending the runoff period trying to close that gap in support between his and Mr. Kemp’s campaigns. Over the past two weeks, he has spent more time campaigning in Atlanta’s suburbs, home to many college-educated conservatives. His campaign has also run more negative advertising about Mr. Warnock and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Democrat serves as senior pastor, amplifying stories about low-income tenants who were evicted from an apartment building owned by a for-profit entity with ties to the church. The two parties’ four-week timeline is down from nine weeks during the 2020 runoff cycle, a change that was enacted under the major voting law that Republican state legislators in Georgia passed last year. Early voting in most counties will run during weekdays after Thanksgiving. “It is really a continuation of the general election,” said Marci McCarthy, the chair of the DeKalb County Republican Party, who is helping coordinate turnout efforts for Mr. Walker’s campaign. This runoff contest, she said, feels far different from the early 2021 races, which “felt like a separate election.” On the stump, Mr. Walker has yet to mention former President Donald J. Trump’s recent announcement of a third presidential campaign, and he has steered clear of the Republican infighting in Washington that has drawn national attention and resources away from his race. His campaign has kept to its habit of eschewing the news media: It has now held more than two dozen events in which Mr. Walker has not answered reporters’ questions. Representatives for Mr. Walker did not respond to requests for comment. The most noticeable changes have been the candidates’ voter engagement efforts. In the days after the general election, Mr. Kemp, who won re-election with relative ease, turned his campaign’s grass-roots door-knocking and canvassing operation, with nearly 200 staff members, into a voter turnout team for Mr. Walker. The team is now funded by the Senate Leadership Fund, the leading super PAC for Senate Republicans. The Republican National Committee has also sent 400 field staff members to the state for voter engagement efforts. Mr. Warnock, for his part, has added field offices and 300 paid staff members to his get-out-the-vote operation, which brings its total number of staff members to more than 900, according to the campaign. The new field operation will be concentrated in both Metro Atlanta counties and those in southern and central Georgia.
But yesterday was a big victory for voting rights:
x This is a big WIN for democracy. Saturday voting is critical for Georgia voters, especially students and workers.
I’m glad the courts have spoken in favor of making it easier for Georgia voters to have a say in their own democracy.
https://t.co/07KLRvuo7r — Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) November 18, 2022 A Fulton County Superior Court judge said Friday that Georgia can hold early voting on the Saturday following the Thanksgiving holiday in the Senate runoff between Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock. The move is a big win for Georgia Democrats and for Warnock’s campaign. Traditionally, high voter turnout favors Democratic candidates, and this ruling means voters will have an extra day of early voting on the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday. Just days after incumbent Warnock announced that his campaign and the Democratic party of Georgia would jointly sue over ensuring a Saturday early voting for his runoff with Republican challenger Walker, attorneys for both sides were in court with the judge reminding them the clock is ticking. “Certainly, this is a time-urgent situation,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox said. It boiled down to this: Can Georgians vote early on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, or does Georgia law specifically prohibit that? Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger believes Georgia law doesn’t allow for early Saturday voting on the day after an official holiday, so he told counties to forbid it.
Click here to sign up to volunteer for Warnock’s campaign.
Click here to find your polling place.
Boosting turnout in this runoff is important and we have to pull it off for the sake of having a Democratic Senate Majority to save Democracy. Click below to get involved with Warnock’s campaign and these grassroots organizations GOTV efforts:
Georgia
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