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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Real Filibuster Reform Appears to Be Dead in the Senate

—By Andy Kroll

| Thu Jan. 24, 2013 10:26 AM PST

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

The fight to rewrite the filibuster, that pesky blocking maneuver used by senators to quietly kill a bill before it even arrives on the Senate floor, appears to be over. As the Huffington Post reports, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have cut a compromise deal that will make it easier for the Senate to begin debating new legislation, while also speeding up the process of voting to confirm the president's judicial nominations. But the deal does not include the major reform liberals wanted: the so-called "talking filibuster," which would force senators to remain speaking on the Senate floor for as long as they wanted to filibuster.

Here's more from HuffPost:

[Reid and McConnell] also agreed that they will make some changes in how the Senate carries out filibusters under the existing rules, reminiscent of the handshake agreement last term, which quickly fell apart. First, senators who wish to object or threaten a filibuster must actually come to the floor to do so. And second, the two leaders will make sure that debate time post-cloture is actually used in debate. If senators seeking to slow down business simply put in quorum calls to delay action, the Senate will go live, force votes to produce a quorum, and otherwise work to make sure senators actually show up and debate.

The arrangement between Reid and McConnell means that the majority leader will not resort to his controversial threat, known as the "nuclear option," to change the rules via 51 votes on the first day of the congressional session. Reid may have been able to get greater reforms that way, but several members of his own party were uncomfortable with the precedent it would have set. And Reid himself, an institutionalist, wanted a bipartisan deal for the longterm health of the institution. Reid presented McConnell with two offers—one bipartisan accord consisting of weaker reforms, and a stronger package Reid was willing to ram through on a partisan vote. McConnell chose the bipartisan route.

The Reid-McConnell deal is nothing to dismiss. It should accelerate the pace of bringing new bills to the floor and confirming nominations in the Senate. But it is a stinging defeat for progressive senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who fought hardest for the talking filibuster.

Merkley and Udall's proposal makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it. If you want to stymie a piece of legislation, or deny a vote on a judicial nominee of the president's, then stand up and explain why and don't stop until you're done blocking whatever it is you don't agree with. The way it works now, senators can filibuster in absentia, meaning they don't need to be on the Senate floor—or even in Washington, DC!—to block a bill. Senators now filibuster more than ever, objecting to even the most routine bills and nominations. As Merkley recently noted, there was just one vote to try to break a filibuster during Lyndon Johnson's time as Senate leader in the late 1950s; under Harry Reid, there are have been 391 such votes.

But even some Democrats in the Senate didn't like the talking filibuster idea. They still believe the filibuster will be useful when, inevitably, they're the minority party in the Senate, and they feel complelled to block the GOP's agenda.

The Reid-McConnell compromise is also a blow to the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of labor unions, enviros, voting rights groups, and other progressive outfits that had embraced filibuster reform as its new cause célèbre. That coalition lobbied hard in the Senate this month and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads to promote the talking filibuster. Now they're left empty-handed. A related filibuster reform group, Fix the Senate, blasted out this statement Thursday morning: "If the agreement proceeds as expected, Senator Reid and the entire chamber will have missed an opportunity to restore accountability and deliberation to the Senate, while not raising the costs of obstruction."

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California School District Spent $14,000 on New Semi-Automatic Colt Rifles

—By Andy Kroll

| Wed Jan. 23, 2013 11:12 AM PST

The Colt 6940 semi-automatic rifle.

When the public school students of Fontana, Calif., returned to classes in January, something had changed about their schools. Specifically, the Fontana Unified School District had filled on-campus safes with $14,000 in new Colt 6940 semi-automatic rifles for its 14 police officers. The high-powered, long-distance rifles will only be used in "extreme emergency cases."

As the Los Angeles Times reports, the Fontana school district's heavy arming of its campus cops has stirred a controversy in the local community. One school board member, Leticia Garcia, told the Times that police officials and school administrators acted without consulting local Fontanans, a grave mistake given the ongoing national debate around guns and schools. "It was not vetted by the board and not vetted by the community," Garcia said.

Each Colt 6940 rifle, with an upper receiver originally designed for US Special Operations Command rifles, costs at least $1,000. Here's more from the Times:

The district purchased the rifles in October and they arrived in December, before the tragedy in Newtown, where a gunman killed 26 people—20 of them children—at an elementary school. The shooting sparked a debate on whether armed school guards could prevent these types of tragedies.

The rifles have been on campuses since students returned from winter break in January, said Fontana Unified School District Police Chief Billy Green.

Though the purchase was not spurred by any one event, the rifles are designed to increase shooting accuracy from a distance and provides officers with effective stopping power against assailants wearing body armor. Those capabilities are necessary for officers to stop a well-armed gunman, Green contends.

"If you know of a better way to stop someone on campus that’s killing children or staff members with a rifle I'd like to hear it," he said. "I don't think its best to send my people in to stop them with just handguns."

"I hope we would never have to use it," he said. "But if we do, I'd like them to be prepared."

MAP: Does Your State Let You Carry a Gun on Campus?

Five states now do, and seven others may soon follow—including Texas, where a shooting just shook up a community college.

—By Gavin Aronsen, Jaeah Lee, and Andy Kroll

| Wed Jan. 23, 2013 6:56 AM PST

On Tuesday, a dispute between two people at Lone Star College in Houston ended in a gun fight. Three people were wounded (including suspects in the shooting), and a fourth person was reportedly hospitalized with an unspecified "medical emergency" in connection with the incident. It was the sixth shooting on or near a US college campus this month.

Texas generally has lax gun laws, but prohibits carrying a concealed weapon on a college campus. The GOP-controlled Texas Legislature may soon change that, however. Last week, state Sen. Brian Birdwell, a Republican, introduced new "campus carry" legislation that would allow firearms to be carried at public colleges with a valid permit. Texas would join five states* that, to varying degrees, now allow weapons to be carried on campuses. And lawmakers in at least seven other states are aiming to follow suit.

Does your state allow concealed guns on college campuses? Hover over an individual state for further details. (Also see lists below the map.)

States with laws allowing guns on college campuses: Colorado, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah, and Wisconsin.

States in which lawmakers have recently introduced legislation to allow guns on campuses: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Wyoming.

For more, check out MoJo's yearlong investigation into gun laws and mass shootings in the United States.

Correction: California was included in this category in the initial version of the story; the state bans concealed guns on college campuses but makes exceptions for individuals with valid licenses who are granted specific permission by school authorities.

Sources: National Conference of State Legislatures; Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Why An Unknown Senator Named CeCe Is a Breakthrough in the Campaign Money Wars

—By Andy Kroll

| Wed Jan. 23, 2013 4:01 AM PST

Cecilia Tkaczyk.

You probably haven't heard of Cecilia Tkaczyk—CeCe to her friends. But the nation's leading activists fighting to get big money out of politics want you to hear her story. After months in court, Tkacyzk squeaked out the second-narrowest win in the history of New York's state Senate, a win progressives are hailing as a potential turning point in the fight to clean up Albany's noxious politics. And if they can pass reform in New York, the front line of the campaign finance wars, activists believe they can pressure other states to do the same.

Liberals love Tkaczyk because she made the public financing of elections a central issue, if not the issue, in her campaign. The underdog in a race against GOP state Assemblyman George Amedore, Tkaczyk proposed replacing New York State's lax campaign finance system with a voluntary program that matches small-dollar donations with taxpayer money. The idea: nudge candidates to court lots of less wealthy individual donors instead of wooing a handful of rich ones. Throughout the campaign, Tkaczyk pressed Amedore on the campaign cash issue, and in the final weeks of the campaign, Amedore turned around and attacked her specifically over public financing, ripping it as too costly and unnecessary.

Strange, right? Two candidates locking horns over...campaign finance? Yet in the Amedore-Tkaczyk race, the dry, unsexy issue of money in politics was front and center.

After the ballots had been counted, and a few dozen votes separated Amedore and Tkacyzk, the election headed to the courts. The two sides fought over which ballots to count and which to exclude, Amedore briefly took a 37-vote lead, but then, more than two months after the election, the court's decision to count a few more ballots tipped the race to Tkacyzk. According to the current count, she won by 19 votes. Campaign reformers point to her victory as proof, albeit on a small scale, that corruption and the influence of money in politics resonates with voters, and that an anti-big-money candidate can win by running on this specific issue. "Her victory shows that voters will support candidates who champion real campaign finance reform, including citizen-funded elections," says Jonathan Soros, who runs Friends of Democracy, which he calls an anti-super-PAC super-PAC.

Yes, Tkaczyk had lots of help. Progressive groups such as Citizen Action of New York and the Working Families Party phone-banked and knocked on doors. Soros' super-PAC spent $265,000 on polling, TV ads, and phone calls to elect Tkaczyk, focusing on the campaign finance issue. And Protect Our Democracy, another pro-reform super-PAC started by investor Sean Eldridge, the husband of Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, spent thousands more to back Tkaczyk while highlighting the campaign money issue. If all that spending sounds a tad ironic to you—outside groups spending big to support an anti-big-money candidate—that's because it is.

But Soros and Eldridge say they want to build a coalition of pro-campaign-reform candidates in New York State, and they argue that it takes money to do so. They focused on New York State Senate races because Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly signaled his support for public financing—but he needs the legislature to send him a bill. Tkaczyk's win adds another pro-reform Democrat to the state Senate. Now, in a divided state Senate, the hard work begins. "It's now up to Ms. Tkaczyk," the Albany Times-Union wrote in an recent editorial, "and all those politicians from Gov. Andrew Cuomo on down who say they stand for campaign reform to live up to their promises to do it."

Post-Election, The Obama Machine Goes to the Dark (Money) Side

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Jan. 18, 2013 9:37 AM PST

Jim Messina managed Obama's 2012 campaign and will now lead Organizing for Action, a post-election nonprofit backing Obama's second-term agenda.

Barack Obama's 2012 campaign was the most technologically advanced political operation in American history, a techie's wet dream. The campaign, led by Jim Messina, amassed and distilled vast quantities of voter data, built apps and networks to mobilize voters and enlist volunteers, and practically perfected the science of email fundraising. Post-election, Messina and his lieutenants weren't about to let their data files, email lists, algorithms, and grassroots machine simply gather dust. Instead, they will soon launch Organizing for Action, a standalone advocacy group created to bolster Obama as he pursues his second-term agenda. Messina wrote in an email to donors and staffers that the new group "will be a supporter-driven organization, as we've always been, staying true to our core principles: 'respect, empower, include.'"

But there's a rub: Organizing for Action will be formed under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, and will not be required to disclose its donors. (The Los Angeles Times first reported this.) For context, Karl Rove's dark-money juggernaut, Crossroads GPS, is a 501(c)(4), as is the Koch-backed national conservative group Americans for Prosperity. The decision to make Organizing for Action a dark-money nonprofit makes sense strategy-wise: as a nonprofit the new group can meet and coordinate with members of the Obama White House, which it couldn't do as a super-PAC. But the decision flies in the face of Obama and the Democrats' supposed commitment to transparency.

Obama has pledged to make his administration the most transparent in history. His reelection campaign also took steps to be open to the public, including the admirable move of disclosing all its super-fundraisers, or "bundlers," each quarter, which it didn't have to do. (Mitt Romney's campaign did not name its bundlers.) But going the dark-money route leaves Organizing for America vulnerable to criticism. "It's the right vehicle from a legal perspective, but it is breathtakingly hypocritical," says Charles Spies, a Republican lawyer who ran the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future.

The new group will be used to mobilize Obama supporters around the key issues of Obama's second term in office. Those issues include battles over raising the debt ceiling, gun control, and immigration reform. Alums of Obama's 2008 campaign launched a similar post-election effort called Organizing for America, but it had little impact, especially on the defining policy fight of Obama's first term, health-care reform.

Organizing for Action, the post-2012 project, will accept individual and corporate contributions, according to the Associated Press, but not money from lobbyists or political action committees. (That said, Team Obama has found ways to sidestep earlier restrictions on interacting with lobbyists.) The new group, which will be separate from the Democratic National Committee, claims it will voluntarily disclose its donors even though it is not legally required to do so.

That's well and good—if it follows through with the disclosure pledge. But even then, Organizing for Action will be far less transparent than a super-PAC. Super-PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, but they must disclose all donations and all spending in a timely way. The type of nonprofit Organizing for Action wants to become is not required to disclose its spending in a timely way—it will detail its spending in IRS filings made available many months after the fact. And it's unclear how often the group will release the names of its donors. Monthly? Quarterly? Annually?

Organizing for Action could, if it wanted, go above and beyond what the law requires by disclosing its donors and spending in real time. For now, it remains to be seen whether the new group will live up to the president's transparency promises.