Somebody Put Crude, Crazy Letters in Mailboxes in Karen Handel’s Neighborhood

So far, the GOP candidate in a red-hot Georgia special election isn’t tying her opponents to the Alexandria shooter. That’s so far. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

Unsurprisingly, the passions and vast investment of resources involved in next week’s special election for the sixth district of Georgia’s U.S. House seat have made the contest ripe for collateral damage from the atrocity apparently perpetrated by James Hodgkinson against Republican members of Congress and staffers yesterday.

Personally, I’ve been wondering if the national Republican groups that have been spending millions of dollars on ads depicting Democrat Jon Ossoff as a blood brother to “extremist liberals” like Kathy Griffin and random anarchists smashing windows might go over the brink to add Hodgkinson to the list of demons associated with the mild-mannered centrist.

But in the meantime, just as news has circulated that among his vast social-media targets Hodgkinson referred to Ossoff’s opponent Karen Handel as a “Republican bitch,” mysterious, abusive letters have popped up in the mailboxes of the Handel family and their immediate neighbors in the quiet suburb of Roswell. They contained a suspicious white powder, though one person exposed to it has suffered no ills.

Notwithstanding the legitimate fears of the recipients of these evil little hate bombs, whoever prepared and planted them would seem to be either an agent provocateur or just a really stupid teenager:

So far, Handel has been admirably restrained in dealing with both the Hodgkinson slurs and the mailbox threats. But I can’t help but believe she is surrounded by people looking at the polls showing her in danger of losing this Republican House seat and telling her to double down on her allies’ smears of her opponent as “one of them.”

Crazy Mailbox Messages Appearing in Georgia Special Election