Trump Basher Vows Comeback

An Establishment effort to cut down Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has stalled, but its founder is vowing to rev the engine back up and raise $250,000.

Liz Mair, a onetime adviser to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker during his failed presidential bid, had announced Friday on Twitter the creation of Trump Card LLC to wage a “guerrilla campaign” against the high-polling real estate tycoon, who has defied the laws of political gravity since the summer.

Mair linked to a GoFundMe page to solicit small contributions. A day later, though, she took the page down. Breitbart.com reported the online fundraising tool had brought in a whopping $356.

But in an email to LifeZette, Mair wrote that the GoFundMe page was set up “on the fly” to accommodate people interested in making immediate small donations online. She indicated that organizers are “restructuring” to attract larger donors, with a goal of raising up to $250,000.

“We have several big donors on board, and we feel good about where we are,” Mair said.

“We have several big donors on board, and we feel good about where we are, especially since our opponents seem to be happily deluding themselves into thinking we’re armed with a couple hundred bucks and that’s it,” she wrote.

As a limited-liability company, Trump Card would not have to disclose the identity of its contributors. It remains unclear what kind of support it has or what strategy it could employ that would achieve what Trump’s GOP opponents and vociferous critics in the media have failed to do in the past five months.

Mair wrote that the group would “hit hard and repeatedly to make a dent” in Trump’s lead and suggested that the strategy could include more than 30-second attack ads.

“I agree with you that a barrage of TV ads, certainly in and of itself, isn’t likely to change the circumstances of the race, which is why we are pursuing a strategy that focuses on things other than a barrage of TV ads and other methods that have not really been tried,” she wrote.

Rick Wilson, a Florida-based political consultant who has been tied to a pro-Marco Rubio super PAC, told LifeZette that he is working with five or six super PACs. He said he supports Mair’s goal, but has nothing to do with organizing Trump Card LLC.

“I’m on board if she moves forward with funding it,” he said.

Trump himself dismissed Mair on Saturday, called her a “wacko” in a tweet. But he also expressed some frustration with the Republican National Committee, writing in another tweet: “@WSJ reports that @GOP getting ready to treat me unfairly—big spending planned against me. That wasn’t the deal!”

So who is this Liz Mair?

Her website describes her as “a communications expert, new media adviser, political consultant and blogger, who writes principally about politics.” A Seattle native, she spent 10 years in Britain, earning a degree in international relations from the University of St. Andrews.

She has consulted for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. She supports abortion rights, served on the “The Leadership Committee of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry” and advocated for the so-called Gang of Eight immigration reform bill in 2013 that included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Mair’s political work has mostly been a string of losses:

•  She worked briefly for Walker, but lost her job in March after it came to light that she had bashed Iowa’s outsized role in the nomination process. She proceeded to launch a Twitter diatribe against her former boss after he dropped out of the presidential race in September. She said she did, however, help Walker win his 2012 recall election.
• In 2010, she led online communications for Republican Carly Fiorina’s unsuccessful California Senate campaign against incumbent Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer.
•  In 2008, she was online communications director for the Republican National Committee, where she said she shopped opposition research to online media organizations and bloggers as part of the unsuccessful effort to elect Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., president.

Mair argued that substantial differences among the plausible Establishment candidates make it difficult to settle on a single alternative who might have a better shot in a one-on-one contest with Trump. She wrote that without highlighting Trump’s past statements in support of government-run health care, ethanol mandates and other deviations from conservative orthodoxy, Trump will waltz to the nomination, and Democrat Hillary Clinton will be elected president.

“Our view is that it’s not smart to continue to leave Trump with a wide open, unobstructed path that he can march to victory” in the GOP nomination race, Mair wrote.