Herschel Walker: Corporations and voter ID critics should help minorities obtain photo IDs to vote

Football legend Herschel Walker says large corporations and activists who oppose the new Georgia election law should help minorities obtain photo IDs for voting instead of "complaining" about the issue "time in and time out."

Major League Baseball moved its annual All Star game from Georgia in response to the new law, which in part requires a photo ID to obtain an absentee ballot.

"My grandfather today, if he was alive, would be 117 years old. He had a drivers license," Walker said Wednesday evening in a virtual discussion organized by Delaware's Wilmington Public Library. "We're in modern time today, and people don't have an ID. And then I say, you know, what's so strange about it is I have all these companies that are coming out, putting it down, 'they don't have ID. People don't have an ID.' "

Companies such as American Airlines came out in opposition to the Georgia voting law. Walker questioned why opponents of the law aren't helping African Americans and others obtain photo IDs.

"Why don't these companies that have been talking so much that want to do that, why don't they help Herschel Walker, to help these people who don't have an ID to get an ID?" he asked. "Meaning, whatever we have to do, whether we have to get buses, whether we have to get other things, whether we have to go fill out the paperwork and help them to get an ID, and not keep complaining about it time in and time out, because I believe in empowering people.

"In today's world, you have to have an ID to do anything, you know, you have certain companies that you need an ID to even get into their office, but yet, they say something different. And so I said, I believe in empowering people, meaning that let me help you to get to where you want to get to." 

Walker was also asked about his opposition to a bill introduced in Congress that would create a federal commission to study providing reparations for slavery.

"I believe in teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish," said Walker, a NCAA football Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia and a former NFL star and U.S. Olympic bobsledder.  

Walker, who is being courted to return to Georgia to run for U.S. Senate in 2022, also said activist groups and civil rights organizations that receive millions of dollars in contributions from corporations should be using that money for job training programs and scholarship programs in minority communities.

Walker would run against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. A survey last month by the Trafalgar Group showed Walker and Warnock essentially tied. The survey of likely 2022 General Election/GOP primary voters showed Walker ahead of Warnock 48% to 46%, with the poll's margin of error at 2.88%.  

"Has anyone on this call ever seen any of that money?" he also asked. "Have you known of anyone that has given that money to start a scholarship program or start a work training [program] or anything to help in the communities? So I said, why are we not holding these people accountable first, and then building places where people can go to work, building so it can be a safer environment; building so they can be educated?"