CONTROVERSIES continue to swirl around Senator and pastor Raphael Warnock (D-GA), who is now being accused of using thousands of campaign dollars to pay child support bills, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings that were recently reported in the press.
As Breitbart revealed, Warnock used $61,959.40 from his campaign for child care since 2020, a use of resources that is controversial because FEC rules are ambiguous on how money raised in child support cases can be used.
“FEC rules surrounding Warnock’s actions are unclear. Childcare payments are allowed by the FEC, but are typically used to pay for the care,” the Breitbart report reads. “Warnock is funding his childcare payments entirely through campaign funds.”
Controversies surrounding Warnock
The revelation about Senator Warnock’s heavy spending on child care comes at a sensitive time, exactly one month after the Democrat was accused of using campaign funds to pay for personal legal expenses.
Also, the questions about using campaign funds for the care of his children comes four months after his ex-wife, Oulèye Ndoye, accused the senator of being a neglectful father for spending little time with his children and that he was in “willful contempt” of the child support agreement.
As reported in April by local media outlet The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ndoye took legal action against Warnock to change the child support agreements, asking for additional custody over her children and a recalculation of child care payments.
Ndoye, in justifying her legal request, said that the Democrat had a substantial improvement in his income after becoming a senator, and also explained that he wanted to move out of Georgia to pursue a study program at Harvard University.
At the time, Meredith Brasher, a spokeswoman for Warnock, gave no further statement on the lawsuit and merely commented that the Democratic senator is “a devoted father who is proud to continue to co-parent his two children as he works for the people of Georgia.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) issued a statement criticizing Warnock for using campaign funds instead of spending part of his good salary on childcare.
“Must be nice for Senator Warnock, who makes several hundred thousand dollars a year between his taxpayer-funded salary in the U.S. Senate and his parishioner-funded salary from Ebenezer Baptist Church. He’s always got his campaign account to bilk for personal expenses,” the NRSC noted.
Controversy is something that has always surrounded Senator Warnock since his 2020 election campaign, when the then-Democratic candidate’s past began to resurface in the media and social media.
During 2020, for example, it was revealed that in 1995, a New York church where Warnock worked hosted the late dictator Fidel Castro. Likewise, in 2014 he received in his church Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who literally cursed the United States in a controversial sermon.
A key election for the Senate
Warnock stars in a vital election race that will potentially define the Senate majority next November, where the Democratic senator will face former college football star Herschel Walker, a figure outside of traditional politics who is being endorsed by both Donald Trump and the Republican establishment.
Like Warnock, Herschel Walker is no stranger to controversy, having had a troubled past due to suffering from dissociative identity disorder that involved him in violence.
Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker (C) participates in a campaign rally to announce his opposition to the Democrats’ proposed Inflation Reduction Act, in Milton, Georgia, U.S., August 4, 2022. Walker is running against incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock (EFE).
However, the former athlete, who was a college star in Georgia, managed to overcome dissociative identity disorder and now promotes policies to care for mental health. The Republican recounted in his book that a key part of his recovery was finding faith in Christ, so the Georgia election faces two openly religious politicians against each other.
Although the liberal media initially scoffed and pointed out that the candidacy of Herschel Walker, a man with no political experience, was a disastrous mistake by the GOP, the former athlete swept the Republican primaries and managed to unite the entire party around his candidacy.
By now, multiple polls show a virtual dead heat between the Republican and the Democratic senator. Some polls even put Walker ahead of Warnock, in an electoral race that promises to be just as close as the November 2020 elections, when in Georgia two Senate seats were contested in a runoff that benefited the Democratic Party, which reached the majority in extremis thanks to the differential vote of Kamala Harris.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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