On this date in 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled, the U.S. House Representative from Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, Karen Handel, who narrowly won the special election for her seat over John Ossoff last year. She had previously finished third in the GOP Primary in the 2014 elections behind David Perdue while trying to win office to the U.S. Senate from there, in 2010, lost a squeaker against Nathan Deal to be elected Governor of Georgia. In the 2017 special election race to replace former Congressman Tom Price, who became (at least for a time), the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Handel identified supporting anti-abortion efforts, repealing the Affordable Care Act, constructing Donald Trump’s border wall, simplifying the tax code, and increasing national defense spending as policy priorities if she would reach office.
Handel’s most recent work before running for office included taking an executive job at the Susan B. Komen Foundation (the charity that gets less than stellar ratings for actually putting its incoming money towards efforts to cure breast cancer) where she deliberately tried to cut donations being made to Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screenings by the organization, because she drinks the GOP Kool-Aid and doesn’t like that a minute portion of their budget goes towards paying for abortions. She actually resigned after Susan G. Komen reversed her decision, but admits what she did in a book she wrote, “Planned Bullyhood”, where she paints herself as quite the martyr in the story.
Handel’s name also came up a lot at the Justice Department’s Voting Rights division from 2007 to 2010 while she served as Georgia’s Secretary of State, because of her efforts to purge voter rolls repeatedly to try and insure that Democrats couldn’t flip Georgia blue in any presidential election. In lower level races, Handel worked to literally block Democratic candidates from getting their names on the ballot. Hell, at one point in the build-up to her race against John Ossoff, she responded to the news that a judge would allow 8,000 voters who registered late to vote in the election by criticizing him and sending out a fundraising e-mail about how unfair all those actions promoting participation in our democracy were.
And Karen Handel is hardly sympathetic on LGBTQ issues, as evidenced in 2010 when she openly discussed banning gay adoption because she felt not only would two gay parents be not a good situation, but even “a situation where the parents are not married, as in one man and one woman, is not the best household for a child.” She wouldn’t even support straight parents with a kid out of wedlock. But did she evolve on the issue by 2017? HELL NAW as can be seen in this video where a constituent who admits to being conservative herself talks about how she has a gay daughter who might want to adopt one day, and asks if Handel supports the concept of someone being able to adopt a child regardless of their sexual orientation. Handel tells her with a smile and shrug, “my faith calls me to a different place on that issue,” because her faith apparently teachers her the virtues of bigotry and ignorance. Handel then scurries away like there might be some gay she could catch off this woman via her daughter. Both of these incidents enraged Georgia’s Log Cabin Republicans, who supposedly had Karen Handel as a member of their group in 2002, and have only watched her consistently argue against them having, y'know, rights.
In the final debate between Democratic candidate John Ossoff, Karen Handel shocked everyone present during what should have been a softball question on the minimum wage, when she not only opposed an increase to it, but phrased her argument as being that she “did not support a livable wage”. Karen Handel, ladies and gents… she doesn’t even care whether a working family can survive or not, the hand of the free market should get to decide that. Hell, even 55% of REPUBLICANS support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 at the time of her remarks.
After finishing second in the initial election against John Ossoff, with all of the other Republicans out of the way, Handel won with 51% of the vote on election day, in the most expensive House race in American history, where the national GOP spent millions to keep her afloat against all the individual donations Ossoff received. This was with the help of last minute ads that bizarrely tried tying John Ossoff to the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise. Her performance, while a win… was not a good bellweather for Republicans, who yes, held a seat, but a seat that has averaged twenty point wins for Republicans since the 1970s, and has a +8 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.
And all the money Republicans spent to hold onto this seat proved to be only a temporary patch, as in the 2018 elections, Democrat Lucy McBath upset Karen Handel, and flipped Georgia’s 6th blue, with Handel only getting 49% of the vote. Handel vowed to avenge that loss, and advanced out of the GOP Primary… what could stop Karen Handel?
She remains an callous twit without a shred of empathy for other human beings, is what’s stopping her. Right around the time the Black Lives Matter movement was making headlines this summer after the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Aubry, Karen Handel had a constituent tell her how she was tired of Lucy McBath talking about her son, who had been murdered by a man who supposed felt “threatened” because he was playing music too loud in the same parking lot, and the constituent said “she needs to get off of it”. Handel vehemently agreed, saying, “You have to think outside of your own person.”
Which…. That’s exactly the point. Lucy McBath wasn’t murdered. Her son was. And she’s thinking about all the other people who are killed with gun violence every year needlessly. Just…
Between telling a mother with a dead son she needs to “get over it” and not believing in a livable wage, we’d like to think Lucy McBath has a second term in office in the works and Karen Handel will have all the free time in the world. We’d like to think.
One Year Ago, September 14th, 2019: Karen Handel (GA)… 2019 Profile
Two Years Ago, September 14th, 2018: Karen Handel (GA)… 2018 Profile
Three Years Ago, September 14th, 2017: Karen Handel (GA)… Original Profile
Four Years Ago, September 14th, 2016: David Vitter (LA)… 2016 Update
Five Years Ago, September 14th, 2015: David Vitter (LA)… 2015 Update
Six Years Ago, September 14th, 2014: David Vitter (LA)… Original Profile