DEATH THREATS, VITRIOL ALL IN A DAY’S WORK TO STOP TRUMP
GOP strategist says time is running short
A veteran Republican strategist who leads a super PAC aimed at blocking Donald Trump from winning the GOP presidential nomination says she wakes up to death threats every morning.
“I don’t suggest that’s all of Donald Trump supporters,” says Katie Packer, organizer of the group Our Principles, which airs millions of dollars in TV ads in Florida and elsewhere targeting the real estate mogul. “But he does seem to have brought out a group of people that used to feel like they needed to sort of keep quiet because what they say isn’t acceptable in polite society, and Donald Trump seems to have given them permission to just speak their mind.”
She calls the flood of emails and tweets threatening to kill her, her family and her dog “the most hateful vitriol that I’ve ever encountered in 25 years in politics.”
In an interview on Capital Download, Packer, 48, says Trump, the Republican front- runner who has won 12 of the 19 states’ primaries and caucuses, “absolutely” can still be stopped — but not for long. If he wins the winner- take- all Florida and Ohio primaries next week, she acknowledges, “it’s much tougher.”
The super PAC she launched in January, boosted by a $ 3million contribution from Republican mega- donor Marlene Ricketts, has aired ads and sent direct mail to voters portraying Trump as a con man and a fraud who is neither conservative nor a Republican. One 60- second ad, titled “Scam,” focuses on students who enrolled in Trump University and are suing him.
“Don’t believe the millions of dollars of phony television ads by lightweight Rubio and the R ( Republican) establishment,” Trump countered in a tweet Monday. “Dishonest people!”
Packer acknowledges that there’s no guarantee the late- starting efforts will undermine Trump. Her best- case scenario is to prevent Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed for nomination at the Republican National Convention in July. Then the other contenders could “maybe put together some kind of unity ticket.”