Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is Mother Jones' Dark Money reporter. He is based in the DC bureau. His work has also appeared at the Wall Street Journal, the Detroit News, Salon, and TomDispatch.com, where he's an associate editor. He can be reached at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. He tweets at @AndrewKroll.

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Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement

You haven't heard of Donors Trust, but it's bankrolled the right's fights against unions, public schools, climate scientists, and more.

—By Andy Kroll

| Tue Feb. 5, 2013 4:06 AM PST

Working out of an nondescript brick rowhouse in suburban Virginia, a little-known organization named Donors Trust, staffed by five employees, has steered hundreds of millions of dollars to the most influential think tanks, foundations, and advocacy groups in the conservative movement. Over the past decade, it has funded the right's assault on labor unions, climate scientists, public schools, economic regulations, and the very premise of activist government. Yet unlike its nearest counterpart on the progressive side, the Tides Foundation, a bogeyman of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, Donors Trust has mostly avoided any real scrutiny. It is the dark-money ATM of the right.

Founded in 1999, Donors Trust (and an affiliated group, Donors Capital Fund) has raised north of $500 million and doled out $400 million to more than 1,000 conservative and libertarian groups, according to Whitney Ball, the group's CEO. Donors Trust allows wealthy contributors who want to donate millions to the most important causes on the right to do so anonymously, essentially scrubbing the identity of those underwriting conservative and libertarian organizations. Wisconsin's 2011 assault on collective bargaining rights? Donors Trust helped fund that. ALEC, the conservative bill mill? Donors Trust supports it. The climate deniers at the Heartland Institute? They get Donors Trust money, too.

[Read the full article]

Image: AEI.org, ALEC.org, Cato Institute's Facebook page, Heartland Institute's Facebook page.

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Michigan Tea Partier: Charter Schools Are for Kids From "Ethnically Challenged Families"

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Feb. 4, 2013 10:03 AM PST

Anti-right-to-work protest signs wait for protesters to take them before the march to the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan, in December 2012.

A few weeks ago, the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-backed conservative advocacy group, held a "citizen watchdog training" in a suburb of Detroit. The training was billed as a workshop for regular folks to learn "the best tools and techniques in investigative journalism, social media, and opposition research." Featured speakers—including local activists, conservative state legislators, and Scott Hagerstrom, AFP-Michigan's director—would also speak about efforts to "reform" Michigan's schools.

Among the AFP set, reforming public schools usually means converting them into non-union, privately-run charter schools. Nationally, AFP is a vocal proponent of charters and "school choice." And at the Michigan citizens training, one of the featured speakers, Norm Hughes, a member of the North Oakland Tea Party Patriots, offered this take on charters:

Kids aren't going to charter schools if they're "A" students. They go to charter schools because they're failing students and, by and large, the charter schools have a higher percentage of poor families, ethnically challenged families…

Ethnically challenged? Hughes did not explain what he meant, but you won't find that take on charters anywhere in the AFP literature. (Listen here to the audio of Hughes' comment, grabbed by Progress Michigan, a liberal advocacy group.)

Whatever Holmes' view of charters, AFP's agenda in Michigan is cause for concern for Michigan's public schools and teachers unions. AFP played a central role in ramming through so-called right-to-work legislation for public- and private-sector workers in Michigan in December. Right-to-work legislation is central to AFP's agenda, and its passage in Michigan, a cradle of organized labor, was a major victory for movement conservatives.

If the January 19 event is any indication, a big push for charters is next up for AFP and its allies in the Michigan legislature. But before they go whole-hog on charters, AFP conservatives might want to give their conservative bedfellows, like Norm Hughes, a few tips about messaging.

Karl Rove's New Super-PAC: Republicans Attacking Republicans!

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Feb. 4, 2013 4:06 AM PST

Karl Rove walks the floor of the 2012 Republican National Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

No more Todd Akins. No more Richard Mourdocks. No more Republican primaries that produce divisive, gaffe-spewing GOP candidates.

That's the aim of a new super-PAC, the Conservative Victory Fund, spearheaded by Karl Rove and his big-money juggernaut, American Crossroads. Rove's new project plans to raise millions of dollars from the biggest GOP donors and then spend it on hard-hitting television ads and mailers during GOP primaries in marquee Senate races. The goal, as the New York Times reported this weekend, is blocking future Akins and Mourdocks from winning Senate primaries, while paving the way for less-divisive candidates with broader appeal and better odds of winning the general election. "We don't view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win," Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads and a force behind the Conservative Victory Fund, told the Times.

Law singled out Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who could run to replace outgoing Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, as a controversial candidate the Conservative Victory Fund might target. King has a penchant for howlers: He's hinted at questions about President Obama's US citizenship, claimed minority students all "feel sorry for themselves," insisted that the idea of diversity making American stronger "has really never been backed up by logic," and compared illegal immigrants to dogs. "We're concerned about Steve King's Todd Akin problem," Law said. "All of the things he's said are going to be hung around his neck." (King, for his part, said choosing the candidate to replace Harkin "is a decision for Iowans to make and should not be guided by some political staffers in Washington.")

The Conservative Victory Fund's creation threatens to stoke an already fiery internal battle over the future of the Republican Party. There are the Roves and Laws of the GOP, the pragmatic Beltway operators who backed Mitt Romney and who believe the party must tone down the demagoguery on immigration and social issues if they ever want to control of Congress and the White House again. On the other side are the ideologues, the GOP's conservative wing, the Koch-backed groups and tea partiers and Grover Norquist acolytes who believe the party's future lies in veering hard to the right and doubling down on pure conservative ideals.

With Rove's new super-PAC in the mix, the GOP's slate of 2014 primaries will be even nastier than expected in states such as Iowa, Georgia, and Kentucky, among others. The GOP needs to win six seats in 2014 to take back control of the Senate, and if that requires some intraparty combat, the Conservative Victory Fund looks ready to go to war. By the end of 2014's primary season, don't be surprised, to borrow a phrase from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, to see quite a lot of blood and teeth left on the floor.

Walmart Workers Get Organized—Just Don't Say the U-Word

The labor movement has gained a toehold inside one of America's most anti-union companies. Can it survive?

—By Andy Kroll

| March/April 2013 Issue

Outside the box: Black Friday shoppers and OUR Walmart protesters at a Walmart in Paramount, California last November. Nick Ut / AP Photo

At first, William Fletcher, a soul-patched, wisecracking 24-year-old who works in the electronics department at the Walmart in Duarte, California, couldn't believe what the stranger with the clipboard standing outside his front door was telling him. The guy was describing a new group called Organization United for Respect at Walmart, which was recruiting employees like Fletcher to demand higher wages, better benefits, and less-punishing work schedules. Fletcher liked what he heard, but was skeptical. He'd recently settled a bitter dispute with management over a knee injury. "Frankly, I was convinced it was Walmart sending someone over to trick me into signing something to get me fired," he says.

He told the guy he wasn't interested, but another organizer came knocking the next day. This OUR Walmart thing must be real, Fletcher thought. He signed up but didn't dare tell anyone, and for months the fear of being found out gnawed at him. And with good reason: Walmart strongly discourages the 1.4 million "associates" at its 4,601 US stores from organizing. The company has been known to shutter whole departments and even entire stores where unions make inroads. The result: The average associate earns $8.81 an hour, and many rely on food stamps and Medicaid.

[Read the full article]

The 2012 Election's Price Tag: $7 Billion

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Feb. 1, 2013 1:48 PM PST

The final campaign filings are in, and we can now put a price tag on the 2012 elections: $7 billion.

That's how much candidates, parties, PACs, super-PACs, and politically active nonprofits spent last year to influence races up and down the ballot. As Politico reported, Ellen Weintraub, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, announced the $7 billion figure this week. Candidates spent the bulk of the 2012 total, at $3.2 billion, while parties spent $2 billion and outside groups $2.1 billion.

The FEC's $7 billion figure is about a billion dollars more than what transparency groups had projected for 2012. It's the most money ever spent during one election cycle in US history, a cycle in which Barack Obama became the first $1 billion candidate, both Obama and Romney rejected public financing, and outside spending soared to levels never before seen in the post-Watergate era.

Here's more from Politico on 2012's $7 billion price tag:

"It's obviously only an estimate," Weintraub told Politico. "It's really hard to come up with 'the number.'" And Weintraub said future elections could see even more spending.

"It's a lot of money. Every presidential election is the most expensive ever. Elections don't get cheaper," she added. Spending in the first post-Citizens United presidential election exploded as the FEC remained gridlocked on critical issues. Three years after the Supreme Court ruling that changed the campaign finance system, the FEC has yet to change its regulations to address the decision.

The agency also found that despite the proliferation of super PACs, traditional political action committees outspent the new breed. Of the total spending by outside committees, $1.2 billion was spent by traditional PACs and $950 million was spent by super PACs.