Karen Handel

Karen Christine Handel (née Walker; born April 18, 1962) is an American businesswoman and politician.

Handel was born Karen Christine Walker in Washington, D. C., on April 18, 1962, 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, in Largo, Maryland, and the University of Maryland, University College, in Adelphi, Maryland, but did not earn a 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 the global eye-care company Ciba Vision and the international accounting firm KPMG.

She served as president and CEO of the Greater Fulton County Chamber of Commerce.

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.

From December 2002 to November 2003, Handel served as deputy chief of staff to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, where she worked as a policy advisor and supervised constituent services, the Governor's Mansion, and general administration services.

She had run for commissioner unsuccessfully in November 2002, while serving as the president and CEO of North Fulton County Chamber of Commerce.

Handel chose not to run for re-election as the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, in order to run for Georgia Secretary of State.

A member of the Republican Party, Handel served as chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners from 2003 to 2006, as Secretary of State of Georgia from 2007 to 2010, and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2017 to 2019.

In November 2003, Handel was elected chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners in a special election to replace Mike Kenn, receiving 58% of the popular vote, and continued to serve in that role until 2006.

In August 2006, Handel won the Republican primary election for Secretary of State of Georgia, defeating state Senator Bill Stephens of Canton.

Handel received 56.6% of the vote, to Stephens' 42.4%.

In the November 2006 general election, Handel defeated Democratic nominee Gail Buckner, receiving 54.1% of the vote, to Buckner's 41.8%.

Handel was the first elected Republican secretary of state in Georgia history.

She served as Georgia Secretary of State from 2007 to 2010.

Soon after taking office as Georgia Secretary of State, Handel began a project to purge voter rolls.

The procedure involved matching data with information in various sources, such as the Georgia Department of Driver Services database or the Social Security Administration database.

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 elections.

Handel received the endorsement of former Republican 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, as well as former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

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".

In March 2009, Handel announced her decision to run for Georgia governor.

Handel resigned as secretary of state in December 2009 in order to focus on her campaign for governor full-time.

In 2010, Handel ran for Governor of Georgia but narrowly lost the Republican primary to Nathan Deal, who attacked Handel as overly supportive of gay rights and abortion rights.

On July 20, 2010, Handel received 34% of the vote in the Republican Party primary election, 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.

The primary campaign was particularly heated; Deal attacked Handel as insufficiently anti-abortion and his allies portrayed Handel as a "barren woman", claiming that her infertility rendered her untrustworthy on reproductive-rights issues.

Deal also attacked Handel for her past association with the gay-rights group Log Cabin Republicans, given staunch opposition to gay rights among Republican voters.

In 2011, Handel was appointed Senior Vice President of public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a charity focused on fighting breast cancer.

Handel pushed the charity to cut off Komen's funding for breast-cancer screening at Planned Parenthood, reportedly because of her personal anti-abortion views.

In the ensuing uproar over politicization of the charity, Handel resigned from Komen in February 2012.

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 that the state had taken a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" approach in trying to reach voters who had not cast a ballot within the past 7 years to confirm their addresses.

In 2017, Handel became the first Republican woman from Georgia elected to Congress after winning a special election to fill a vacancy in Georgia's 6th congressional district.

In the 2018 general election, Handel narrowly lost her seat to Democrat Lucy McBath.

On November 3, 2020, Handel lost to McBath in a rematch, earning a lower percentage of the vote than she did in 2018.