From
Wikipedia: Karen C. Handel (born April 18, 1962) is an American politician from the state of Georgia who served as the 26th Secretary of State
of Georgia and
is currently a candidate for Georgia's 6th Congressional District Special Election.
A member of the Republican Party, Handel worked in business before
entering politics. She was a member of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners before being elected
Handel
was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Upper Marlboro,
Maryland. After graduating in May 1980 from
Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro, Handel attended both Prince George's
Community College and The University of Maryland, but did not complete any
degree.
She
then went to work for Hallmark Cards. Later, she served as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle's wife, Marilyn, where she worked to promote breast cancer awareness and research.
Handel
worked at several major companies including global eye care company Ciba Vision and international
accounting firm KPMG.
She
served as president and CEO of the Greater Fulton County Chamber of Commerce.
In
December 2002, Handel was named deputy chief of staff by Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, where she served as a policy advisor and supervised
constituent services, the Governor's Mansion, and general administration
services.
In August
2006, Handel won the Republican primary election for Secretary
of State of Georgia. In
the November 2006 general election, Handel defeated Democratic nominee Gail
Buckner. Handel was the first
elected Republican secretary of state in Georgia history.
Soon
after taking office as Georgia Secretary of State, Handel began a project to
purge voter rolls. By 2008, more
than 50,000 registered Georgia voters had been "flagged" by state
officials because of computer mismatches in personal identity information,
forcing them to prove their eligibility. Some eligible voters were told that
they were "non-citizens" although in fact they were citizens.
Voter suppression allegations were raised and the rule became the subject of a
federal lawsuit by the ACLU of Georgia and MALDEF, which accused Handel's office of engaging in a
"systematic purging procedure" expressly barred by federal law within
90 days of an elections.
In
2009, the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (DOJ) ordered a halt to the state's "voter
verification" effort (denying it approval under the Voting Rights Act of
1965), determining
that "thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote under Georgia
law have been flagged" and that the program was "flawed and
frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or
Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the
right to register to vote. This marked the first time since the 1990s that the
Justice Department had denied approval to a change in Georgia election
practice.
Handel
defended her program, asserting that it was appropriate and necessary. A federal judge in Atlanta later
dismissed a lawsuit that had accused Handel's successor, Secretary of State
Brian Kemp of illegally bumping Georgia voters off the state's rolls ahead of
the 2016 presidential election. In the 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge
Timothy C. Batten Sr. said the state had taken a "reasonable and
nondiscriminatory" approach in trying to reach voters who had not cast a
ballot within the past 7 years to confirm their addresses.
In
March 2009, she announced her decision to run for Georgia governor. Handel announced in December 2009 that
she would resign as Secretary of State in order to focus on her campaign for
governor in the 2010 election full-time.[19]
On
July 20, 2010, in the Republican primary vote, Handel received 34% and former
Congressman Nathan Deal received 23%. Since neither candidate received a
majority, they faced off in the Republican gubernatorial run off on August 10,
2010.
In 2011, Handel was appointed Senior
Vice President of public policy at Susan G. Komen for
the Cure, a leading
charity in the cause of fighting breast cancer and left on February 7, 2012,
following the foundation's controversial decisions to end, and then restore,
funding for Planned Parenthood (Handel opposed the funding).
Handel unsuccessfully sought the
Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in the 2014
election.
Handel is currently a candidate for U.S. House of
Representatives,
running in the 2017 special election to fill a vacancy in Georgia's 6th
congressional district.
In the primary, she received the largest number of votes of any GOP candidate
in a divided GOP field, allowing her to compete in the runoff election against Democrat Jon Ossoff on June 20, 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Handel
Comments
As
Secretary of State for Georgia, Karen Handel did her duty to clean up the voter
lists and establish voter IS laws to prevent voter fraud. That earned her a
lawsuit by the chaos crowd but eventually the suit was dismissed. This makes
her a bonafide outsider.
I hope
Karen Handel will work on voter fraud and end the federal government attack on
voter ID laws. Her background makes her valuable.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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