As we note below, today is primary day in many states, among them a hotbed of crazy - the State of Georgia. Each candidate running for the Republican Senatorial nomination has made his or her* own contribution to the Republican War on Women. However, one candidate stands alone in his personal bidness experience with the challenges women face in the working world:
With Republicans trying to avoid a repeat of 2012's Todd Akin disaster and retake the Senate, the Georgia GOP establishment was happy to see David Perdue, a self-funded businessman, leading in the polls ahead of Tuesday's Senate primary. Compared to gaffe machines such as Rep. Paul Broun, who has pushed personhood for zygotes, and Rep. Phil Gingrey, who defended Akin's "legitimate rape" comment, the former Dollar General CEO seemed unlikely to introduce fraught gender issues into the general election—where Michelle Nunn, the likely Democratic nominee, is polling well against the GOP field.
But Perdue's record on women's issues—specifically, whether women are entitled to equal pay for equal work—is far from clean. In 2006, three years into Perdue's four-plus years as Dollar General's CEO, federal investigators at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that female store managers who worked for the company he ran "were discriminated against," and "generally were paid less than similarly situated male managers performing duties requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility." A year later, separate from that investigation, thousands of female managers who were paid less than their male counterparts joined a class action suit against the company—which Dollar General eventually settled, paying the women more than $15 million. (our emphasis)* The one female candidate on the Republican side is Karen Handel, who burnished her credentials as a wingnut warrior when, as an official of the Susan G. Komen fund, she used her influence to defund grants to Planned Parenthood. Following a firestorm, the nice lady was forced to resign in April 2012, hence her appearance in the Senate race, however briefly.
