Walker vows to pay overdue rent for tenants threatened with eviction at apartment run by Warnock's church

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker has vowed to pay the overdue rent owed by tenants of a building managed by his opponent’s church as allegations that he paid for his former girlfriend to have an abortion 13 years ago loom large in his campaign. 

Herschel Walker, the Republican running to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in next month’s U.S. Senate election, reacted in a tweet to a Washington Free Beacon report about Ebenezer Baptist Church’s efforts to evict tenants of an apartment building it owns.  Warnock serves as senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

I have never known a preacher that likes abortion even after birth, won’t pay his child support and evicts poor people to the street. I will pay the 00 in past due rents listed in this news article to keep @ReverendWarnock from evicting these people. https://t.co/IqSBIWUnLU

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— Herschel Walker (@HerschelWalker) October 11, 2022

Ebenezer Baptist Church has a 99% ownership stake in Columbia Tower at MLK Village, which, according to documents obtained by The Washington Free Beacon, serves as a home for the “chronically homeless” and people with “mental disabilities.” The report shows that 12 eviction notices had been served to residents of Columbia Tower from February 2020, just before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, to September 2022. The amount of overdue rent cited as the justification for evicting the tenants adds up to $4,900.

“I will pay the $4,500 in past due rents listed in this news article to keep @ReverendWarnock from evicting these people,” Walker wrote. One tenant of Columbia Tower who spoke to The Washington Free Beacon said of the building's management, “They treat me like s***” and “they’re not compassionate at all.” 

While it remains unclear the degree to which Warnock and Ebenezer Baptist Church play a role in the day-to-day operations of Columbia Tower and the Ebenezer Building Foundation that manages it, a form submitted to the IRS identifies Warnock as its “principal officer.” 

As explained in an application requesting a $5 million grant from the state of Georgia to renovate the building, “Ebenezer Building Foundation was established in 1996 to raise funds for the construction and 14 / 22 maintenance of facilities of the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta and to support the various programs of Ebenezer Baptist Church including ownership in Columbia Tower at MLK Village a permanent supportive housing development of 96 units serving the homeless, mentally ill population in Atlanta, Ga.”

The Washington Free Beacon portrayed the actions taken by the management of Columbia Tower as at odds with Warnock’s rhetoric on the campaign trail. The publication found a Dec. 6, 2020, tweet from Warnock lambasting his Republican opponent at the time and all Senate Republicans, suggesting that they “refuse to fight for families” as “pandemic unemployment benefits and eviction protections will expire this month.”

Pandemic unemployment benefits and eviction protections will expire this month.

And it's all because @Kloeffler and Senate Republicans refuse to fight for families.

Pandemic relief is at stake in the #GASen race. #GASenDebate#VoteWarnock

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) December 7, 2020

The Washington Free Beacon report about the apartment building owned by Warnock’s church comes a week after The Daily Beast published a report maintaining that Walker paid for his girlfriend to have an abortion 13 years earlier. While Walker has denied the allegation, the story has invited charges of hypocrisy from his opponents, who have noted that the candidate has made his pro-life position on the issue of abortion a central part of his campaign. 

A follow-up article from The Daily Beast published later in the week asserted that the woman who told the publication that Walker paid for her abortion in 2009 was also the mother of one of his children. In the second article, the woman insisted that Walker “didn’t take responsibility” for the child that they had together. 

As Walker deals with the fallout of The Daily Beast reports, he brought up Warnock's position on abortion and reports that the Democratic senator had “failed and refused to reimburse” his ex-wife for “childcare expenses”: “I have never known a preacher that likes abortion even after birth, won’t pay his child support and evicts poor people to the street.” 

The RealClearPolitics average of polls taken over the past week shows Warnock ahead of Walker by 3.3 percentage points. However, Georgia law requires candidates to receive 50% of the vote to win an election outright. The current polling average shows Warnock with 48.3% of the vote, with Walker at 45%. Should no candidate receive 50% of the vote on Election Day, the top two candidates will advance to a Dec. 6 runoff. 

The FiveThirtyEight Deluxe Model, which predicts the outcome of elections based on “polls, fundraising, past voting patterns” and the opinion of political experts, gives Warnock a 60% chance of winning the election while Walker currently has a 40% chance of emerging victorious.