One of them is a retired pastor and senator from Georgia. The other is a former American football star from this southern state. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker will resume their unusual duel in terms of personality and ideas for a seat in the US Senate in early December after a failed vote on Tuesday, AFP reported.

Neither of the two African-Americans cleared the 50 percent barrier in the midterm elections, so they will face voters again on Dec. 6. Both are from Georgia, but their life paths have many differences.

Before becoming a senator from Georgia in 2021, Democrat pastor Raphael Warnock, 53, preached from the pulpit of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King served.

He was elected against former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was supported by Donald Trump, and thus became the first African-American elected to the Senate to represent Georgia, a southern state with a strong segregationist past.

The son of an ex-serviceman, a pastor and a mother who worked in the cotton fields, Raphael Warnock is the eleventh of 12 children. Raised in poverty in public housing in Savannah, a colonial city on the Atlantic coast of Georgia, he said in 2020 that his path to Martin Luther King’s church and then to the Senate was only possible “in America.”

In the only debate against Herschel Walker, he sometimes struggled and was sometimes criticized for his lack of charisma.

h2. “Bulldogs” Idol

Former American football star Herschel Walker, who was supported by Donald Trump, entered politics late, running for the Senate.

The 60-year-old former athlete, with several records under his belt, is considered one of the best players in the history of American college football, a quasi-religious institution in the southern United States that makes billions of dollars every year.

The University of Georgia idol became a household name when he led the Bulldogs to the 1980 national title.

His professional career – while respectable – has been less than stellar, with a notable stint with the New Jersey Generals, a franchise owned by none other than… Donald Trump.

After finishing his sports career in 1997, Herschel Walker started business, in particular, the distribution of poultry products.

In his memoirs, published in 2008, he explains that after his sports career he was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, a mental disorder controversial in the scientific community that involves the presence of several different personalities in one person.

h2. Abortions

The seat he is running for could be decisive in determining the majority in the Senate. The campaign to identify them in the run-up to the November 8 election was marred by a series of scandals.

The woman accused Herschel Walker, an active anti-abortion activist, including in rape cases, of pushing her to have an abortion in 1991 while he was still married.

A second woman claimed that after she had an abortion while in a relationship with Herschel Walker, he urged her to have a second abortion two years later. However, she refused, leaving behind the child, who is now 10 years old and has reportedly only seen her father three times.

During his election campaign, Herschel Walker was forced to admit that he had three children from extramarital affairs, in addition to the son born with his wife.

In 2020, his ex-wife accused Raphael Warnock of running over her leg with a car during an argument while the couple were separating. Police and medical personnel at the scene said at the time that they found no obvious signs of injury.