Karen Dalton, who plans to challenge Scott Perry in the GOP primary, has her own definition of RINO

If she makes it on the ballot, Karen Dalton will be U.S. Rep. Scott Perry’s first primary opponent since 2012 – the year he first won the seat.

Dalton, a retired staff attorney for the Pennsylvania House Republicans, knows the odds are against her as she runs a solo campaign operation out of her living room. But she thinks she has a shot.

The 65-year-old Carlisle resident is irked by President Donald Trump’s policies both from a faith-based standpoint and a legal one.

She holds many views that align with Democrats, which may draw accusations that she’s a “RINO,” or Republican in name only. But she argues she’s a Republican at heart.

“I was talking to a senior citizen the other day, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘So you’re a RINO,” said Dalton, 65. “And my response to that was, well, if you mean ‘Respect for Individuals and Not Oligarchs,’ I’ll go along with that. He goes, ‘No, no, no, I’m a RINO too. I’m that old school Republican that believes in helping people.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, thank you. That’s what I’m talking about getting back to.’”

Perry, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump who supported his unsuccessful attempts to overturn the 2020 election, represents Dauphin County and parts of Cumberland and York Counties in Central Pennsylvania. He appears to be particularly vulnerable this year as the district has shifted toward Democrats and Republican-turned-Democrat Janelle Stelson, a former local news anchor, had a razor-thin loss against him in the general election last year. She plans to run again in the Democratic primary.

Dalton, in a long-ranging interview with The Inquirer in her living room, called Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act the “Big, Brutal Betrayal of the American Dream Act,” because of its cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

She believes former Vice President Kamala Harris should have pushed back more on Trump’s claims about transgender people in the 2024 election, argued that the term “illegal alien” is factually incorrect, and says on her website that climate change is a real threat.

She supports a $15 federal minimum wage and a millionaire’s tax, and wants to raise the corporate tax rate. She supports abortion rights and believes health care is a human right, though she’s fearful of what she views as over-regulation from Democrats.

Her walls are covered with Republican political memorabilia and a poster of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat who was assassinated during his 1968 presidential campaign.

She noted that she was a Republican when Donald Trump was a Democrat.

Her path to victory, she believes, is convincing enough independents and Democrats – particularly former Republicans – to change their registration to support her in the May GOP primary.

“You know, independents have been upset many years because Pennsylvania has a closed primary system … if they register as Republicans, they get to vote in a primary against Scott Perry and not wait until November,” she said.

Primary challengers are rarely successful. Dalton reported under $3,000 in contributions – and an approximately $6,000 loan from herself — through September, which is pennies compared to the more than $1 million Perry reported.

But she only needs to gather 1,000 signatures and pay a $150 filing fee to appear alongside him on the primary ballot.

Perry’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Dalton as of Wednesday.

Dalton grew up in New Jersey and was the first in her immediate family to go to college, attending Montclair State University before getting her politics graduate degree at New York University and later attending law school.

She lives in Carlisle near Dickinson Law — her “beloved alma mater” — in a home she bought just four years ago at age 61. With student loans hanging over her head for the vast majority of her career, she couldn’t afford a down payment until her state retirement payday.

She has no kids and she’s never been married — “I spent a lot of time reading and studying and going to school,” she said. These days, she takes piano lessons and plays pickleball, and does pro bono legal work when she’s not knocking on doors for her one-woman campaign.

Dalton is rosy-eyed about moderates of the Republican Party’s past. She managed former U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood’s (R., Bucks) successful state Senate campaign in 1986 and worked for New Jersey Republican Gov. Tom Kean, who wrote The Politics of Inclusion. She later worked as a staff attorney for Pennsylvania House Republicans for 25 years, where she focused on domestic violence and child sexual abuse legislation.

“I’m convinced that if the Republican Party wants to survive and thrive, we need to give up what Donald Trump believes in, and return to our roots,” she said.

Dalton, whose parents were both Democrats, changed her registration from independent to Republican in 1984 at the age of 24 after her first job working for Ralph J. Salerno’s unsuccessful state Senate campaign in New Jersey. When he lost, “amazingly, nobody took up arms,” she said.

“I mean, I cried in his lapel, but you know, it’s just like he conceded, and everybody moved on,” she said. “There was no insurrection, there was no battle, there was no violence, there was no ‘Oh, there was voter fraud.’ None of that stuff happened, because that’s the way things used to be before Donald Trump was president.”

Dalton said she didn’t think she’d become a candidate herself during her years working for politicians. But she said “steam started to come out of my ears” when Trump tried to end birthright citizenship, and again when House Speaker Mike Johnson mused about defunding the federal judiciary.

“I just couldn’t sit back anymore … I got tired of yelling at the television,” she said.

While Dalton argued that Trump’s rise in 2015 has soured the Republican Party, much of her criticism concentrated on the Jan. 6, 2021 riot and what followed.

Dalton worked with Perry in Harrisburg when he was a state representative, and she described him as “an incredibly nice man” despite her misgivings about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and continued alignment with Trump. (She calls him “morally blind” on her website.)

When asked if she ever supported Perry, Dalton said she wasn’t comfortable talking about who she voted for in the past because “ballots are private.” She did say that she didn’t vote for Trump in 2024, and she voted for Stelson, Perry’s Democratic challenger.

“I can tell you that I don’t vote for insurrectionists,” she said.

Dalton was raised Catholic, confirmed Episcopalian, and has attended the Unitarian Universalist Church. Though she hasn’t converted, she now identifies as Jewish, and was moved to tears while talking about a late mentor who introduced her to the religion – noting that speaking about the subject made her “verklempt,” a Yiddish term for emotional.

“One of the things I love so much about Judaism, in addition to its focus on social justice, is the idea that you get to disagree,” she said, a handful of crumpled tissues in her lap.

Her faith informs her approach to public policy, from opposing cuts to healthcare subsidies to appreciating ideas across the political spectrum.

One of her flagship policy proposals is creating a way for people to borrow up to two years worth of their own Social Security benefits before they reach retirement age to help with things like a down payment, tuition, or medical expenses – one that would have helped her buy a home earlier.

Another is a scholarship program that would allow students in any field to borrow the full amount of their education from the federal government through loans that would be forgiven if they serve “the public good,” a rebuke of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill’s borrowing limit on federal student loans.

She also wants to create a program to pay for the education of students who want to pursue careers in science and guarantee employment at national health or science institutions, including a new foundation for scientific discovery.

Dalton has brought her neighbors into her home to discuss her ideas, and plans to do it again.

She also held a town hall at Central Penn College in Enola that she said drew 15 people.

“That’s 15 more people than Scott Perry looked in the eye and talked to over the past five years at his town halls that didn’t exist,” she said.