President Donald Trump will host a fundraiser for Karen Handel, the Republican candidate in the runoff to fill an open U.S. House seat in Georgia, on Friday in Atlanta.
Trump’s fundraiser was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday, and Handel’s campaign confirmed to TPM that Trump would fundraise for the GOP candidate on Friday.
Handel will face off against Democrat Jon Ossoff in a runoff election on June 20 after Ossoff narrowly missed winning the race last week.
The special election in Georgia has gained national attention because Democrats see it as one of their best chances to turn a ruby-red district blue. Tom Price, who now leads the Health and Human Services Department, won re-election to his House seat in the Sixth District by more than 20 points in November. However, Trump only won the district by one point, giving Democrats hope that they can channel anti-Trump fervor into a win in Georgia.
The fundraiser Friday afternoon asks for $25,000 for a host sponsorship and $27,000 per person for tickets, according to an invitation obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
During the months leading up to the April election day, Handel largely steered clear of Trump. She acknowledged that she voted for Trump but rarely mentioned him on the campaign trail and did not say the President’s name during her speech last week. Yet, after she advanced to the runoff, she welcomed Trump’s support and said she hoped he would fundraise for her.
Can’t he just tweet that Ossoff is a terrorist?
I assume Trump WILL tweet that Ossoff is a terrorist. As deep red as the district is, his appeal might work. But if Handel loses anyway the entire party will be absolutely terrified. They won’t be able to run away from Not-that-bright-Orange quick enough.
That’d work for me!
So, does this mean Handel’s taking Russian money or no?
Isn’t this the woman that worked for Susan G. Komen Foundation? Ossoff needs to keep reminding people how this woman wanted to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood while she worked in public policy for a charity whose claim to fame is being interested in preventing breast cancer. Without Planned Parenthood a lot of those women will die, unable to get early detection, referrals and medical support. This is really an example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Anyone fully interested in eliminating breast cancer would not shun the most successful program in the country that helps all women with regards to their health, unless you’re really not what you claim to be.
If we’ve learned anything, this woman is a nightmare for women’s health and has no problem bullshitting the public…If anyone comes out for a special election in an off election year, its women. Her work with them was so bad, she had to resign from the Komen Foundation due to bad PR. But since Komen was complicit in going along with Handel, and then pretending they weren’t…they’ve managed to expose that foundation for what it is…another rightwing grift machine, with a built-in rightwing culture war mentality, using wingnut claptrap driving its mission.
Due to Handel’s poor judgement and rightwing bias on women’s health, women everywhere, in large numbers, began donating to Planned Parenthood directly instead of pass-throughs like Komen, who had originally awarded some of their grants to PP. Komen stopped awarding grants to PP in 2014…that’s how little they care about breast cancer and women’s health in general imo. They’d rather make money licensing their name for pink guns, and ‘pinkwashing’ everything. Since Komen no longer provides grants, they’ve lost a lot of support, and justifiably so. They have Handel to thank for exposing their hypocrisy with her included as among the hypocrites.
Gawd, I hope she loses. She’s horrid.