SWGA Politics

Karen Handel Is Being Ms. Leading

Okay, so that was a blatant play on words in the title. She may have won a straw poll or two – and I’m not even sure about that – but this post is about Handel being misleading.

Here’s the setup:

Yesterday at around 11a, Austin Scott posted this tweet to his feed:

Just signed qtrly wage and tax returns. That is something Karen Handel has never done. Of course Karen wasn’t Deputy Chief of Staff either.

His point on the first bit was that Handel has been going around claiming to have “created” jobs, yet she has never run a business of her own. But that isn’t the one that led to so much curiosity.

You see, both Icarus and Erick were apparently writing on PeachPundit about this tweet at the same time. Neither of them specifically mentioned the latter part of that tweet in their initial article, but Icarus asked about it in one of his comments on his article.

And here’s where Ms. Handel becomes Ms. Leading:

Handel claims on her website that

From a job at Hallmark Cards corporate offices in Washington, D.C., Karen was recruited to work in the Bush-Quayle White House, eventually becoming Deputy Chief of Staff.

Now, this would lead one to believe that she was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. Instead, she was the Deputy Chief of Staff to the wife of the Vice President. In other words, she wants you to think she was a decently high-ranking official. I mean, come on, the Chief of Staff may not be in the Constitution, but it is well known that it is a position of tremendous power, and being the Deputy Chief of Staff is indeed something to brag about. But that wasn’t Handel’s position. She was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Marilyn Quayle, the wife of then-Vice President Dan Quayle. She admitted it 3 years ago in her race for Secretary of State, why did she have to be misleading now? (See the second page of that PDF)

Her position was as the gofer to the gofer for the wife of a man who has a position that is “nothing more than checking on the health of the President every morning” – per that great Historian and Statesman Will Rogers. OK, so my lame attempt at a bit of humor may have fallen flat there. In all honesty, the position of Deputy Chief of Staff to the wife of the Vice President (the “Second Lady of the United States”?) is something to be proud of. But what exactly did she do there? Is this simply a title that SOUNDS impressive and actually turns out to be not much more than the person who gets the coffee for the person that gets the coffee for the wife of the boss? (In Ms. Handel’s defense, she did apparently play a role in organizing a breast cancer summit on behalf of Ms. Quayle, and due to the nature of event felt it was important to keep politics out of it.)

I’ve met Ms. Handel back in September, and she really is a great lady. From what I’ve seen of the guys seeking to replace her, I’d vote for her in a heartbeat over them in a GOP primary.

But she wasn’t who she wants you to think she was.