SWGA Politics

On Karen Handel’s Resignation

As promised, I do have a bit of commentary on Karen Handel’s resignation as Secretary of State.

First, I agree it was the honorable thing to do – had she done it when she entered the race about 9 months ago. Had she resigned as Secretary of State then, she wouldn’t have had to deal with complaints among the State Ethics Board from the former GAGOP chief lawyer (who now works for the same firm as John Oxendine’s defense team) about her ability to perform her official duties while campaigning. She also wouldn’t have had to worry about complaints of campaigning while officially on the clock with the State of Georgia, or violating Federal law in a campaign ploy.

Second, my honest first thought when I heard the news today was that her fundraising numbers were weak for this period, which ends at the stroke of the New Year. Apparently, Icarus has heard a whisper campaign mentioning this. I had heard nothing, and was basing my thought on nothing more than the timing of her resignation announcement – 10 days before the end of the fundraising cycle. Clearly, she thinks she will need the next four months to raise additional cash, and she knows that she would be barred from doing so if she remained in her position as Secretary of State.

Third, this also answers my question of why she and her campaign team were re-hashing old news all morning on twitter, specifically her four month old endorsement by Erick Erickson and RedState. (To give you an idea of how old this is, it was two weeks before Constable-gate broke.) As I told her via twitter, it wasn’t exactly a shocker that Erick would endorse her even back then, and it is old news now. But with the resignation, I guess she wanted to bring that particular bit of old news back to the forefront – while burying the equally old news of her being told yet again she was violating Federal Elections Law.

I’m not going to compare Ms. Handel to Sarah Palin, as Gary Horlacher did. But she does have a record eerily similar to another personality from the 2008 Presidential election – Barack Obama. Like Obama, Handel has flitted from position to position for several years now, rarely (if ever) completing one job before angling/campaigning for the next. Will she do the same if given the job of Governor, doing that job quietly for two years before beginning to campaign for the next job she wants?

So thank you, Ms. Handel, for finally doing the right thing. I just wish you would have done it when it was nothing more than the right thing to do, rather than waiting until you politically had little choice BUT to do it.