Herschel Walker Can Take Some Comfort: October Surprises are Overrated
Reports that Republican candidate and former football star Herschel Walker paid for a former girlfriend’s abortion are the candidate’s latest headache in a tight Senate race in Georgia.
Already a candidate plagued with problems — from domestic violence allegations to a parade of policy gaffes — Walker could be particularly vulnerable to last-minute revelations. Scandals like these are also known as October surprises, given that they arise in the month ahead of Election Day.
According to David Greenberg — a professor of history, journalism, and media studies at Rutgers University — October surprises have lost their potency through the years. In what’s perhaps good news for Walker and his party, events that once would be described as an October surprise barely stay in the public consciousness at all.
On this week’s episode of The Weeds — Vox’s podcast for politics and policy discussions — Greenberg discusses the history of the term and some of the most notable October surprises in recent memory.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Jonquilyn Hill
What exactly is an October surprise?
David Greenberg
Originally, it meant a sort of calculated surprise that was deliberately released or made public in October, shortly before the election, in order to influence the outcome of the election. There is the further thought that this was something done by the rival campaign, maybe by the media, but really that there was a sort of deliberateness to it.
Nowadays, I think we’ve changed the meaning so that it means anything that comes up in October that’s a surprise. All kinds of things now get thrown into this basket and it’s lost a little bit of that original idea. The economy takes a turn for the worse. There’s a good jobs report, a bad job report, a good stock market day, bad day. Those things aren’t really what we meant by “October surprises.”
Jonquilyn Hill
Where did the term originate?
David Greenberg
The term goes back to the 1980 campaign. Jimmy Carter was the incumbent but was running a kind of uphill reelection battle against Ronald Reagan. And one of the many things bogging Carter down was all these American hostages who had been taken in Iran during the revolution and the overthrow of the Shah. It was actually a Reagan campaign official, Bill Casey, who implied there was going to be an October surprise: that Carter was somehow going to get the hostages freed in October in order to revive his sagging fortunes.