By John Fredericks / STAFF

“I’ve had to fight for everything my whole life,” says Georgia Secretary of State and GOP gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel. “So this is no different.”

But fighting for a political office is one thing. Fighting for your life, your family, your respect, your sanity and your self-preservation is yet another.

Handel, forced to fend for herself and take on the daunting responsibility of caring for her family as a young teen, knows both worlds all too well. Undoubtedly, she prefers the former.

She says running for governor is nothing compared to what’s she been through. Her electoral slogan, “Bring It On!” seems bold at first blush. But when you get the details of her life, it becomes more than a political mantra on a bumper sticker. It opens the window to her soul. It breathes life into her heart. It captures the essence of a woman that is known by many, yet remains intensely private to most. It defines her past as much as it foretells what may be her destiny.

MOMMIE NOT SO DEAREST

Handel grew up in a shattered and dysfunctional home environment where her mother was an abusive alcoholic and her father was a passive bystander. Her father chose to stay and keep his family together, rather than take the kids and leave.

“I moved out of the house six months before my eighteenth birthday. I was seventeen, and I was able to stay with some friends in the neighborhood, so I could still go to school regularly and I worked a job after school and at night…”

Handel described her childhood as “very troubled.” She said she still had to care for her younger sister every day as well. Handel said her sister was born without an esophagus. “That obviously had a strain on the family as well, but she is in great health today.”

Reflecting back on her dad, Handel said she doesn’t know if her father did the right thing by staying with her mom.

“To this day I struggle with whether or not my father was the strongest person I’ve ever known or the weakest in not dealing with the situation. He could have left and he didn’t; he stayed with his family. There were three kids and he did what he could to make sure, in his own capacity, he dealt with the situation,” Handel said. “He did what he thought was right, and I respect him for that.”

Handel says is very close to her father now. Her mother died eight years ago.

Upon graduating from high school Handel was forced to get a job. “There were not exactly provisions for college,” she said.

Handel said she never thought much about what she had to endure early on.

“I was always strengthened by my faith and the absolute knowledge that somebody else somewhere had things a whole lot worse than I did. And that kind of thing keeps you from having a pity party around what’s going on in your own life,” she said.

Handel’s first job was as an administrative assistant at AARP headquarters, with an annual salary of $9,750. “I thought I died and went to heaven,” Handel remembered.

THE BIG BREAK

Handel explained that her big break in life came when she got a job at Hallmark Card Co., in their government affairs office. That’s where she met her mentor, a woman named Ray Evans, who still remains her closet friend and confidant today.

“Ray saw in me things that I certainly never saw in myself, and she gave me opportunities that most people would not have ever been able to have.” Handel says Ray had a significant impact on her. “She has been the most influential person in my life. I still talk to her several times a week.”

Handel said she started going to college at night to further her career, and went for 10 years. “I only stopped going at night when I got the great fortune to work in the White House, and I had to commit the hours that I needed to get the job. I couldn’t do both.

“In life, you have to make decisions and certainly if I would have chosen not to work at the White House, I think my life and my career would have gone in a different direction. I can’t go back and change the things that are done. What I need to do is draw from the experiences that I’ve had and lead a good life. That’s what I try to focus on. I can’t be in control of other people’s criticism of me.

“Nobody else gets to define me. I define me and I’m very secure in who I am and my beliefs and where I am in life and win or lose the governor’s race, I will still be who I am,” she said. “I guess I can just quit this campaign and go back to school and finally make something of myself, “ Handel then quipped.

THE NOT SO ICEY WOMAN

Her political enemies have painted Handel over the years as self-serving and driven by blind ambition. Some have even referred to her as the “ice woman.”

But things on the inside are not always what they seem on the outside.

Handel and her long time husband, Steve, who live in Roswell, have no children.

When asked if that decision was by circumstance or by choice, Handel attempted to answer what was undoubtedly a personally invasive question.

The question forced her to re-live what I soon learned was an agonizing and heart wrenching experience, by telling the story of what she classified as the most disappointing period of her life: her inability to conceive a child of her own. Handel said she and her husband tried for over eight years to have a baby. They participated in every medically available remedy, to no avail, including In-Vetro.

Handel recanted how distraught she became, and how it nearly destroyed her world. “Every month for over eight years was just like a devastation over and over and over again…” she shared.

Handel was filled with raw emotion as she shared her experience. This was not made for TV emotion. It was real. It was riveting. Her pain was evident; I felt it run through me. It hasn’t left me yet.

On her husband: “Many men would have moved on in another way I suppose, but he’s just a wonderful individual and my biggest fan probably, and I his.”

The candid exchange was one the most compelling interview interactions I have experienced in my journalism career.

Think of the woman politically what you will.

But to classify her as “self serving” is not to know what’s in her heart.

Q & A WITH HANDEL ON THE ISSUES

Q: Define your vision for Georgia?

HANDEL: Mine is a 21st century vision for this state with real problem solving metrics, John, where we focus on measurable outcomes versus politics and gimmicks.

Q: Education?

HANDEL: We need to address the fundamental issue of educating our kids. We have doubled our spending per student in the last 10 years in Georgia and we’ve still not moved the numbers to acceptable levels in terms of graduation rate and SAT scores. That signals that it’s not so much how much we’re spending, but what we’re doing with what we’re spending. Our teachers have to be part of the team and part of the solution because they are the front-line educators.

Q: Economic development?

HANDEL: Clearly creating jobs right now is the top priority and to do that, we’re going to have to re-think how we’re doing economic development in Georgia.

 We’ve been fortunate to be able to attract some big companies over the past couple of years, like NCR and First Data, which between the two of them will create well over 3,000 jobs, which is great. But there are only so many big companies out there. So, we‘ve got to re-tool and place a greater focus on small business.

Most of us don’t realize this, but 90 percent of the companies in Georgia have 50 or fewer employees. Job creation is going to come by re-igniting that segment of our business sector and doing what we can do to spur small business growth and entrepreneurialism in our state.

To do that, we need to revamp our tax code with comprehensive reform. It’s not been looked at in total for 30 years and we need to modernize it so that we can be more competitive in this global market place.

If you look at the tax foundation’s rankings of overall tax burdens for all states, both individual and corporate, we rank about 27, so we’re in the middle of the pack, not so bad, but not good enough. We should be in the top 10 lowest tax burdens of any state in the country if we’re going to really be competitive, and leverage all of the tremendous assets that we have in our state.

Q: What specific tax code changes do you advocate?

HANDEL: We need to pull down the income tax rate and then look at what we would need to do on the sales tax side to off set that. When you look at our competitor states, primarily, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, what do they not have that we have? A state income tax. The other thing that we need is more flexibility for local governments. Right now, they’re very restricted on SPLOST dollars, etc. If I have the privilege of serving as Governor, this will be done in partnership with our local governments because I don’t think that we can do meaningful tax reform unless we do it all together. Otherwise you have tax reform at one level and pass the buck down to the lower level. That’s not tax reform. That’s a politically cynical shell game.

Q: Draw a distinction between a Handel Administration and the current Perdue Administration?

HANDEL: I think the obvious style differences that would be there. I’m not going to dwell on what Gov. Purdue has or hasn’t done. We’ll talk about how I would approach things. We have Republican majority in the House and the Senate and as a Republican governor, I‘ll view it as my responsibility to pull the leadership together, leading into each legislative session.

We are not going to agree on everything and, in fact, I wouldn’t want us to agree on everything because, if we’re doing that, then we‘re not really debating ideas and solutions as fully as they would need to be debated. But we should be able to come together around particular priorities so that we can really move the ball on some of the key issues, whether it’s tax reform, how do we reform the budget process in the state; transportation, education, job creation, etc. So, it’s not a matter of what are the priorities going to be. It’s a matter of, as governor, stepping up and showing the leadership to help people coalesce around what should be the focus of a session and what should be our focus going forward. That will be part of my job in partnership with the Speaker and Lt. Governor, I view it very much as a partnership because I am well aware that things that I would want to do aren’t going to be able to get done unless we have a strong relationship between the administration and the Speaker and the Lt. Governor.

Q: So its fair to say you would approach the governorship like the CEO of the state?

HANDEL: I think that is fair, yes. I am a proactive individual and I think it would be my job to be proactive. I have been proactive in every position that I’ve had, whether it was at Fulton County or Secretary of State and that won’t change as Governor either. And it also means that on really important initiatives for this state that I will be putting my own political capital on the table for good solutions.

Q: What about water?

HANDEL: Probably the most critical out of all the infrastructure issues that we face. While we all have great, great angst about the recent legal ruling, the one thing that I think probably was a good thing from it was that it mandated a deadline. This is an issue that has been hovering over our state for two to three decades. Yes, we need to continue conservation efforts, but we’re not going to conserve our way out of this. Yes, we need to get busy with reservoirs, but we can’t reservoir our way out of this and here’s why. Lake Lanier represents 66 percent of the water storage capacity, 66 percent. So, congressional reauthorization of that legislation to provide for the specific purpose of drinking and water storage is imperative. Clearly, proceeding aggressively with the appeal and aggressive negotiations with the states are no brainers…obviously we need to do that. Frankly, I think the new strategy to attempt to deal with Alabama separately from Florida is a good one, because you only have one partner you’re trying to negotiate with.

Plus, we need to make sure that the initiative to have a statewide water management plan not only continues, but is accelerated and completed and that we move forward with the implementation of it. It should be completed before 2011, so that means implementation would fall within the next administration.

There are already initiatives underway for reservoirs that go back to my Fulton County days. The city of Atlanta unilaterally blocked the expansion of the water plant on Old Alabama.  Fulton County, for years, has wanted to double the size of that plant.  Atlanta had the votes and stopped it.  So, that's another option as well. 
Think about the Cauley Creek facility in Johns Creek. That is another opportunity we have not [leveraged].

Q: Did you favor SB 200 and what would you do to solve the state's transportation woes?

HANDEL: I do think that Senate Bill 200 was a step in the right direction. I don't think it addressed everything. You can have all of the rules and policies and processes you want, but making things work depends on having the right people. The new GDOT Commissioner, Vance Smith, is a step in the right direction. 

We have to have a statewide transportation plan for Georgia that lays out a transportation infrastructure for the next 25 or 30 years so that we know what we want to do.  

 As an example, one of the frustrations I had as a County Commissioner was that I understood that McGinnis Ferry would need to be widened at some point, but there was no ratified state plan to give us any ability to say no to a zoning along McGinnis Ferry.  So, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to not have a plan, knowing that you need to have more capacity and then zone in the right-of-way of where you know you need to have capacity.  It's just absurd.

We'll have the expansion of the ports, which is going to increase truck traffic by at least 30 percent in the next two decades - the time to prepare for that is now. We know we won't break ground tomorrow on these new thoroughfares, but we should know where we want them to go so that we can start to preserve those right-of-ways and, in doing that, open up east-west corridors across the southern part of the state and that will help us with economic development.  

In metro Atlanta we need a very different approach. All the conversations at the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) have focused on how to move people from outside of Atlanta into downtown Atlanta. But that's not reflective of the commute patterns of today.  

We have arguably 11-12 employment nodes around metro Atlanta and our transportation strategies for the region need to be focused on moving people to and from those employment nodes.  Certainly land use plays into that, but that's a balance because I don't know that government and zoning rules can really drive that.  I think it's more market driven.  So how do we make that work is the question.  And much of that falls to the counties and the ARC. That’s what we need to be thinking about.

Thinking long-term means putting political capital on the table and I'm prepared to do that.

Q: Specifics?

HANDEL: I will embrace public and private partnerships. We've got some credibility to rebuild there.  

The additional penny on gasoline should not go to the general fund of the budget. It should be dedicated to transportation.

I don't know how you go out and talk to Georgians about paying more unless you tell them what the more is going to be.

Q: Would tolls be an option?
  
HANDEL: Let me be clear on tolls: I support tolls for new capacity, but not for existing roads. I just don't know how you ask people to pay twice for the same thing.

Q: Are you in favor of eliminating the toll on Georgia 400 after it's paid off?
 
HANDEL: That's a difficult one. When Gov. Perdue first came in, he put the executive order in place to ensure that no dollars would be off-loaded from the toll revenue to other projects, that they could only be used within the Georgia 400 corridor. So that would be a dialogue with the citizens of North Fulton. The ongoing toll could be used to pay for ongoing intersection improvements for arteries leading to and from Ga. 400.  

If we were to use it help jump start a fix at the 400-285 interchange or Holcomb Bridge Rd. or further up into North Fulton, like Windward that might work for the citizens of North Fulton.  
 

Q: What would you want your legacy to be?
 
HANDEL:  I can't even think out at that point at this time. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I think that's for other people to decide. I can just tell you that for me personally, I want to help Georgia and lead this state to deal with the issues that we have so that our state not only thrives, but that we are even better than we are today, and do it all in a way that is honest and ethical and keep my feet on the ground.

I'm truly just a gal trying to do the right thing. I know that sounds really trite, but it is nothing more than that.

Q: If you win, you will be the first woman governor in the history of Georgia. Are you going to use your gender as an advantage in this campaign?

HANDEL: Yes, why not?