Remember a few years ago when Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood got in a big fight and it nearly blew up the Race For The Cure? It turned out that Komen had a die-hard anti-abortion activist as a senior official who had orchestrated the plan ― and she resigned.
If it’s not ringing a bell, go back and read Laura Bassett’s reporting from 2012 on the whole affair. She got ahold of emails showing that a Komen official named Karen Handel had schemed to yank Komen funding from the women’s health group, precipitating a public relations crisis that nearly destroyed the cancer research organization.
It did not, however, destroy the career of Karen Handel. She went on to a long string of election losses, including a failed bid for the Republican nomination for governor and another for the nomination in a U.S. Senate race. This year, she lowered her sights and went for Tom Price’s vacated U.S. House seat in Georgia. The 6th Congressional District had been in Republican hands since the 1970s. How could she lose?
Never question Karen Handel’s ability to find a way to lose.
On Tuesday, Handel pulled in roughly 20 percent of the vote in the primary, finishing second to a 30-year-old Democrat in a district Republicans won by 24 percentage points just five months ago. The Republican vote was split widely among a slew of candidates ― all of them apparently worse than Handel.
Handel will face Democrat Jon Ossoff in the runoff on June 20.
Back in 2012, when Handel left Komen, Dave Weigel ― then of Slate, now of the Washington Post ― satirized the American political system with a story suggesting she’d soon make a comeback and win the presidency by 2028. I remember the story, because the fake reporter byline he used was none other than my daughter’s name.
NOVEMBER 2028
Handel wins presidency; All-female team will be nation’s first
by Iris Grim, Buzzfeed
ATLANTA ― Republican nominee Karen Handel has won the 2028 presidential election, an astonishing comeback for a woman who became a national martyr in the early-century abortion wars.
“This is not a victory for me,” Handel told 100,000 supporters at a celebration here. “This is a victory for the American people.”
The victory was closer than late polls suggested, with Handel’s victory over Democrat-Scientology fusion candidate Gavin Newsom only becoming clear after ballots from Wisconsin’s Waukesha County were counted. Some analysts suggested that Handel’s running mate, Bristol Palin, weakened the ticket with “inexplicable” campaign trail antics.
In an interview with ABC News, a subsidiary of Buzzfeed-Halliburton, Handel’s chief strategist Ari Fleischer downplayed that criticism. The passage of the 35th Amendment, which granted full voting rights at conception, gave the Handel-Palin campaign an early cushion of votes, something the Newsom-Cruise ticket never overcame.
“It probably didn’t hurt that a flood took out the entire Eastern Seaboard,” Fleischer added.