Saturday, May 20, 2017

Karen Handel Good Choice

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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