Florida Senate Candidate Val Demings Taunts Herschel Walker with Police Badge: 'This One's Real'

Mar. 15, 2025

Val Demings (left), Herschel Walker.Photo: Val Demings/Twitter; John Bazemore/AP/Shutterstock

Florida Senate candidateVal Demingstook to Twitter Tuesday to taunt a candidate on the other side of the aisle — RepublicanHerschel Walker, who has recently come under fire forflashing an honorary police badgethat he has claimed allows him to “work with police.”

Demings, a Democratic congresswoman and former chief of the Orlando Police Department, shared a photo on Tuesday with her own police badge, adding the caption: “This one’s real.”

Walker’s use of an honorary police badge began publicly in August, when the former football legend turned Georgia Senate candidate posted an image of a Cobb County, Georgia, “Special Deputy Sheriff” badge on Twitter, writing that he “was proud to serve the blue as an Honorary Agent and Special Deputy Sheriff of Cobb County for many years.”

TheAtlantaJournal-Constitutionreports on at least three instances of Walker lying about being in law enforcement, including in 2019, when he said he “spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school,” a claim multiple fact-checkers have disputed.

The badge came up again during last week’s Georgia Senate Debate with Democratic Sen.Raphael Warnock, when 60-year-old Walker took the badge out of his suit pocket after his opponent called out several past instances in which the Republican has misled voters about his record.

“One thing I have not done, I’venever pretended to be a police officer,” Warnock saidin a clipfrom the debate. “And I’ve never threatened a shootout with the police.”

Walker then reached into his coat, responding: “And now, I have to respond to that. No, no, no, I have to respond to that. It’s so funny, I am [sic] work with many police officers.”

Days later, in an interview with NBC News, Walker was continuing to claim that the honorary badge is “real,” and allows him to “work with the police getting things done.”

His campaign is now reportedly using fake police badges as a publicity tool and plans tohand them out at events featuring Walker.

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Demings, meanwhile, served in law enforcement, graduating from the police academy in 1983 and becoming the first woman to lead the Orlando Police Department in 2007.

Val Demings, Marco Rubio.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

After being elected as a U.S. representative in 2017, the lawmaker earned a spot on PresidentJoe Biden’sshortlist of possible running matesin 2020. She was earlier rumored to be mulling a run for governor of Florida.

Instead, she opted to challenge Rubio, officially announcing her candidacy in June 2021 with athree-minute announcement videodrawing on her time as the Orlando’s Police Department’s first female chief of police and her own personal history growing up “in the South poor, Black and female.”

Demings, who served 27 years with the Orlando police, said in the video: “I just never got tired of it. Eventually, this working mom worked her way up to chief of police.”

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source: people.com