WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Herschel Walker as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.
Walker, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump who ran unsuccessfully for a Senate seat in Georgia three years ago, was confirmed 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 American embassy there has been run by a series of charge 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 2022 Senate campaign to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a runoff. Walker’s campaign was marked by turmoil and scandal, including financial problems, micromanagement and questions about his past that he struggled to answer. Weeks before the election, a report revealed that Walker, who ran on an anti-abortion platform, had paid for an abortion in 2009.
He admitted to giving a $700 check to an ex-partner, but denied knowing it was an abortion in a 2022 interview with NBC News.
Trump defended Walker amid the abortion report, which shook his campaign. Walker was perplexed in favor of Trump heading into the 2024 presidential election.
Trump nominated Walker to 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 position of ambassador has been vacant since the departure of Nicole Avant, appointed by former President Barack Obama, in 2011.
Obama nominated Cassandra Butts, who had served as deputy White House counsel during his presidency, to the position in 2014, but the Senate did not act on the nomination. He reappointed Butts a year later, but she died while her nomination was pending.
