NC Senate hopeful tweets in Waffle House, and gets covered and smothered on social media
Some are calling it “Wafflegate”: A seemingly innocent tweet about breakfast food that led to a social media firestorm reminiscent of a past North Carolina Senate campaign dining controversy.
It happened the moment Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Walker made the decision around 10 p.m. Thursday to walk into a Waffle House at an undisclosed location, order and take a photo.
He was overdressed for the occasion, wearing a suit jacket. And he missed that many North Carolinians wouldn’t think to step into a Waffle House before midnight.
But that wasn’t the part everyone focused on.
No, it was his order: A plate of beige-colored food and a hamburger patty. Toast, hash browns and eggs.
No one is quite sure what to make of the eggs. Was it an omelet with nothing in it? Did he forget to have them scrambled the way only Waffle House can do it? Where is the hot sauce? Or at least salt?
And there was another issue: Walker wasn’t holding a fork to eat his breakfast-dinner. He was holding a pen.
People had questions. A lot of them.
Waffle House began to trend.
Walker immediately took to Twitter to defend his choices, but the responses and questions kept pouring in on social media.
He said he couldn’t afford to eat at a Ruth’s Chris Steak House because he hadn’t raised enough money this quarter —he ranked fourth in fundraising and was out-funded by a political newcomer.
Then he posted a second, less-appealing photo of partially eaten breakfast food that had more color and included waffles.
That’s where the bigger mystery came in. People immediately said that it didn’t appear to be the same booth from the first photo. Booth 1 had a red back and was near a door. Booth 2: silver and near the front counter.
Walker then deleted the first tweet, which had launched the whole discussion. He left the second one up.
He blocked at least one commenter.
That led to even more ridicule, more publicity for Waffle House and some on Twitter questioning how Walker might get through the election if he couldn’t handle the heat of questions about his breakfast food order.
Many wondered if this would be as bad as Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham‘s barbecue scandal of the 2020 election, in which he indicated that grilling — on a gas grill! — was the same as barbecue.
By Friday afternoon, Walker returned to the scene of the crime in more appropriate Waffle House attire, along with campaign signs and 12 supporters.
He took another photo with two workers who looked like they might be questioning how their life led to this moment.
And he tweeted again: “After trending for plain hash browns last night, I have now been Scattered, Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Diced, Peppered, and more. Always enjoy my time at Waffle House!”
It wasn’t clear whether he actually ate at Waffle House two days in a row.
Or what happened to the first tweet and the food it featured.
This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 7:19 PM.
