Georgia’s high-stakes race has controversial Republican Herschel Walker in a dead heat with incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock

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Reverend Raphael Warnock is preaching to the faithful.

On this recent weekday evening, the location is not his usual pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist, the downtown Atlanta church once led by Martin Luther King, Jr., but Cascade Skating, a roller rink on the city’s blue-collar southwest side. And his purpose is not to save souls, but to save his U.S. Senate seat and Democratic control of the upper chamber.

His style, however, is the same, weaving together an anecdote about writing a letter to his six-year-old daughter with a moral argument for social justice.

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“To respond to the climate crisis, to deal with health care, to fight for a livable wage, to fight for equal pay for equal work for women, to stand up for a woman’s right to choose, to do all of these things, in the end, is our letter to our children,” he thunders.

All of this is on the line in Tuesday’s midterm elections, where polling shows Mr. Warnock in a dead heat with Republican Herschel Walker. Their Georgia race could be the tipping point for the Senate, currently split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, with Vice-President Kamala Harris holding the tiebreaking vote.

On the hustings, Mr. Warnock does not say Mr. Walker’s name, but he draws an implicit contrast. The senator invokes his long history of activism for health care expansion and voting rights to highlight the former football star’s status as a political newcomer. While Mr. Warnock delivers sermon-like speeches without notes, Mr. Walker has attracted attention for his bizarre pronouncements.

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On one occasion, Mr. Walker said the U.S. should not cut carbon emissions because the country’s “good air” would then “float over to China.” On another, he told a parable about a bull impregnating multiple cows. He has even cast doubt on the science of evolution. “If that is true, why are there still apes?” he said. “Think about it.”

Two women, meanwhile, have come forward to say Mr. Walker paid for their abortions after they became pregnant by him, despite his now supporting a countrywide ban. Media reports have revealed Mr. Walker once threatened to shoot his then-wife and the police, and has three previously undisclosed children.

He has denied the abortion stories, acknowledged the children and said his domestic violence was caused by dissociative identity disorder.

Polling shows Mr. Walker performing worse than Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who is up for re-election in a rematch of his 2018 race with Stacey Abrams. It suggests the Senate could turn on a chunk of Republicans and independents who are cool to Mr. Walker.

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“I don’t feel Herschel Walker was the best candidate we could have. Character means a lot to me,” said Chris Coren, a 58-year-old heat and air contractor, after voting early at a recreation centre in the Atlanta bedroom community of Stone Mountain.

But he ultimately decided it was more important to get control of the Senate for the Republicans and marked his ballot for the ex-footballer. “The Democrats have shredded the economy,” he said.

Mr. Coren also pointed to Mr. Warnock’s own personal life. His ex-wife has accused him of running over her foot with his car during an argument, which he denies, and off-loading a disproportionate amount of child-care onto her.

Sharon Samuels said she opposes abortion, but didn’t hold Mr. Walker’s past behaviour against him. “He could have been misinformed about when life begins. It’s possible he changed his mind,” said Ms. Samuels, 63, who works in a seniors’ residence.

Jordan Shenefield said he voted for both Democrats and Republicans in these elections. But when it came to the Senate, he was determined to see Mr. Walker defeated. “He’s totally not qualified, he has no experience and he’s a threat to our democracy,” he said.

Mr. Shenefield, 71, was particularly bothered by Mr. Walker’s close association with former U.S. president Donald Trump, who continues to deny the results of the 2020 election.

Looming over the race is the spectre of voter suppression.

Last year, Georgia’s Republican state government passed a law that makes it more difficult to cast a ballot. Among other things, it restricts mail-in voting and gives citizens’ groups the right to challenge the eligibility of swaths of voters. Mr. Kemp contends such rules are necessary to prevent voter fraud.

Critics say the law is meant to disproportionately discourage Democratic-leaning non-white and young voters from going to the polls. Such fears are particularly acute in a state that was central to the 1960s fight to enfranchise Black Americans.

The hope among Mr. Warnock’s supporters is that the fury over the law will drive up turnout. Indeed, early voting in the state has significantly outpaced the last midterm in 2018.

Standing in Mr. Warnock’s audience at Cascade Skating, Gail Bean embodies this dynamic.

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the 29-year-old actress ordered a mail-in ballot to her suburban Atlanta home. By election day, it still hadn’t arrived, so she went to vote in person. But at her polling station, staff told her she couldn’t cast a ballot because she had already applied to vote by mail. “They denied me my vote,” she recounts.

This time, she took no chances, heading to the polls on the first day of early voting.

The election personally resonates for Ms. Bean in another way. When she was in her final year of high school, she had an abortion. She finds it hard to fathom how much harder her life would have been if she had been in that position under today’s laws; with Roe v. Wade overturned, Georgia banned nearly all abortions.

“The only way we change this is to get people out to vote,” she says. “If we show up in droves and waves, you can’t suppress us.”