Norma Pickett says she’s been a Republican since she could vote. She backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
This year, Pickett, who lives in Carson, Skamania County, has joined a vocal splinter group of Republicans who are declaring they’ll vote for Kamala Harris for president.
Pickett recorded a homemade testimonial for a $50 million national campaign launched by Republican Voters Against Trump, a political action committee airing ads in key swing states featuring ex-Trump supporters.
A video including statements from Pickett and other disaffected Republicans was shown on the United Center jumbotron during the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, drawing cheers.
For Pickett it’s all a little strange. She wasn’t watching the convention. A neighbor told her that her mother in Minnesota had seen the video.
“Never would I ever have thought I would be voting for a Democrat president, let alone be featured at their convention,” she said.
Pickett, 60, says she’s identified as a Republican and a conservative since she could vote at age 18. A local government employee whose late husband had once chaired the local GOP, she voted for Trump enthusiastically in 2016, brushing off controversies that surrounded him.
“I just felt he spoke his mind,” she said. “He wasn’t a normal politician, and I was thinking ‘oh that’s just a guy talking, that’s just Trump talking,’ ”
In 2016, Pickett reposted Trump’s celebratory tweet when he officially became the Republican nominee for president: “I will work hard and never let you down. AMERICA FIRST!”
By 2020, Pickett said she’d started to sour on Trump, citing his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, failure to fulfill promises such as building a border wall and sidling up to foreign autocrats. Still, she begrudgingly voted for him a second time.
But Pickett said she could not support Trump after his lies about his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden prompted a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“That’s what finally blew it for me,” she said. “I feel his actions and his leadership style are fundamentally at odds with my core values.”
In her video for the ad campaign, Pickett says, “I do not trust that he can do the right thing anymore after the insurrection and with how he keeps documents at his home, how he treats women, how he treats the country, and how he treats the people that work for him, how he’s treated his businesses. I cannot trust him to run our country again.”
In her rebuke of Trump for his Jan. 6 conduct, Pickett was aligned with her congressional representative at the time: Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who became one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump.
Herrera Beutler’s stand drew a furious backlash among most Republicans in Southwest Washington’s 3rd District, and she lost in the 2022 primary to Joe Kent, the Trump-endorsed Special Forces veteran.
Pickett, who had supported Herrera Beutler, said she voted Democrat for the first time in her life that fall, backing Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the little-known auto shop owner who went on to defeat Kent in one of the biggest upsets of the midterm elections.
This fall, in addition to voting for Harris, Pickett says she’ll vote to reelect Gluesenkamp Perez in her upcoming congressional rematch against Kent.
Pickett says she identifies with long-standing Republican values and will vote for some GOP candidates, including Dave Reichert in the governor’s race.
Pickett is one of six former Trump supporters from Washington whose anti-Trump testimonials are featured on the Republican Voters Against Trump website, which showcases more than 100 such videos from ex-Trump voters around the country.
Similar testimonials are running as part of Republican Voters Against Trump’s swing-state ad campaign, according to Tony Franquiz, a spokesperson for the PAC.
The $50 million effort has included ads on broadcast and cable TV, online video platforms and billboards, with ads currently airing in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and plans to expand the reach to more states soon, Franquiz said.
Asked about the ad campaign, a Trump spokesperson told Fox News Digital earlier this year Trump is “building the largest, most diverse political movement in history because his winning message of putting America first again resonates with Americans of all backgrounds.”
The spokesperson called Harris “weak, failed and dangerously liberal” and said a vote for her was an endorsement of “higher taxes and inflation, open borders and more war.”
Pickett said her vote is a stand against Trump’s abandonment of democratic norms, such as maintaining the rule of law and accepting the results of elections.
“I guess I want to hold our leaders accountable, regardless of party affiliation,” she said. “I feel it’s necessary for the future of both the Republican Party and our nation.”
She likened her stance to past political realignments, such as in the 1960s when future President Ronald Reagan left the Democratic Party, which had grown too liberal for him, and became a Republican.
“Parties change,” Pickett said. “My party has changed to something I don’t agree with.”
