Senate confirms Herschel Walker as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Herschel Walker as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.

Walker, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump who unsuccessfully ran for a Senate seat in Georgia three years ago, was confirmed along with more than 100 other nominees in a 51-47 vote that fell along party lines.

Walker will be the first U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas in nearly 15 years. The U.S. Embassy there has been led by a series of chargés d’affaires since 2011.

Walker is a former NFL player who played with Dallas, Minnesota, Philadelphia and the New York Giants. He won the Heisman Trophy at the University of Georgia.

He lost his Senate campaign in 2022 to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a runoff. Walker’s campaign was marked by turbulence and scandal, including financial troubles, micromanaging and questions about his past that he struggled to address. Weeks before the election, a report revealed that Walker, who ran on an anti-abortion platform, had paid for an abortion in 2009.

He acknowledged having given a $700 check to an ex-partner but denied knowing it was for an abortion in a 2022 interview with NBC News.

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Trump defended Walker amid the abortion report, which rocked his campaign. Walker stumped for Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.

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Trump nominated Walker for the diplomatic post in December, praising him in his announcement as “an Ambassador to our Nation’s youth, our men and women in the Military, and athletes at home and abroad.”

The ambassadorship has been vacant since Nicole Avant, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, left in 2011.

Obama nominated Cassandra Butts, who had been deputy White House counsel during his presidency, to the post in 2014, but the Senate did not act on the nomination. He re-nominated Butts a year later, but she died while her nomination was pending.