“I don’t care what color you are,” Georgia’s Republican Senate nominee, who is Black, told an overwhelmingly white crowd recently in Bartow County, north of Atlanta. “This is a good place,” Walker said of the United States, “and a way we make it better is by coming together.”

Yet the former University of Georgia football star who calls all Georgians “my family” has staked out familiar conservative ground on the nation's most glaring societal fissures, seemingly contradicting his promises of unity. Walker says those who do not share his vision of the country can leave and he blasts his opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and the Democratic Party as the real purveyors of division.Their “wokeness” on race, transgender rights and other issues, Walker insists, threatens U.S. power and identity.“Sen. Warnock believes America is a bad country full of racist people,” Walker says in one ad. It's a claim based on the fact that Warnock, who is also Black, has acknowledged institutional racism during his sermons as a Baptist minister. “I believe we’re a great country full of generous people,” Walker concludes.That approach is not surprising in a state controlled for most of its history by white cultural conservatives and it aligns Walker with many high-profile Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But Walker's arguments make for a striking contrast in a Senate contest featuring two Black men born in the Deep South during or immediately following the civil rights movement.0

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