Katie Packer, deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012 and now head of Our Principles super PAC.(Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)
WASHINGTON — The veteran Republican strategist who is leading a super PAC aimed at blocking<span style="color: Red;">*</span>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, now airing 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<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the flood of emails and tweets threatening to kill her, her family and her dog<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"the most hateful vitriol that I've ever encountered in 25 years in politics,"<span style="color: Red;">*</span>worse than the anti-Mormon messages she received when she was deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012.
In an interview on Capital Download, Packer, 48,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>says Trump, the Republican front-runner who has won 12 of the 19 states' primaries and caucuses held so far, "absolutely"<span style="color: Red;">*</span>can still be stopped — but not for long. If he wins the winner-take-all Florida and Ohio primaries next week, she acknowledges,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"it's much tougher."
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Capital Download - Conversations with Washington's biggest newsmakers
The super PAC she launched in January, boosted by a $3 million 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.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>One 60-second ad, titled "Scam," focuses on students who enrolled in Trump University and are now suing him.
"Don't believe the millions of dollars of phony television ads by lightweight Rubio and the R [Republican] establishment," Trump countered<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in a tweet Monday. "Dishonest people!"
Packer acknowledges that there's no guarantee the late-starting efforts will undermine Trump, who has brushed off attacks by Republican rivals and furors over his own inflammatory statements.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"He's tapped into a lot of anger," she told USA TODAY's weekly video newsmaker series. "And there are a lot of people out there who I think<span style="color: Red;">*</span>just want to give a big middle finger to Washington, D.C., and they think he'll do that."
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Anti-Trump train spending millions on attack ads
Now, her best-case scenario is to prevent Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed for nomination at the Republican National Convention in July, starting with a victory in Ohio by Gov. John Kasich and one in Florida by Sen. Marco Rubio. Then, she says, the other contenders, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>could "maybe put together some kind of unity ticket" to amass a majority of delegates.
No matter who wins the nomination, she sees a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>civil war ahead for the Republican Party.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"There is huge disagreement about who should lead our party and what is sort of the core mandate of our party moving forward."
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Elections 2016 | USA TODAY Network
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