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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Jerry Falwell-Linked Lawyer: It's Romney's Fault Gay Marriage Won in 2012

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Nov. 19, 2012 1:35 PM PST

Mat Staver, an influential evangelical lawyer closely linked with the Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University, has named an unlikely culprit for the passage of four pro-gay marriage measures this year: Mitt Romney.

Staver said Monday on the Christian radio program "Faith and Freedom" that Romney's refusal to talk about social issues led to voters in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington State approving ballot measures backing gay marriage. Romney should've campaigned in those four states, Staver insisted, and played up the importance of defining marriage as being between a man and a woman only.

But because Romney's message focused primarily on jobs and the economy, "he could not speak about life or marriage and so he didn't campaign in those states speaking about those issues and associating himself with marriage," Staver said, adding, "had he done so, his numbers would've gone up and I bet the marriage polls would've gone up."

Staver called Romney "mealy" and a "one-note" candidate, and disparaged him for lacking true social values. "If you'd had a candidate that had social values, you'd have higher voter turnout," he said. "If you had Romney, you had lower voter turnout. What ultimately happened in the general election is you had lower voter turnout."

Watch the clip of Staver's comments above, captured and edited by Right Wing Watch. Here's the transcript:

"If you'd had a candidate that had social values, you had a higher voter turnout. If you had Romney, you had lower voter turnout. What ultimately happened in the general election is you had lower voter turnout.

And look at Maryland, for example: 36.6 percent voted for Romney, but 48.1 percent voted for marriage as a union between one man, one woman. Minnesota: 45 percent voted for Romney, 47.4 percent voted for marriage. In Washington, 41.8 percent voted for Romney, 46.8 percent voted for marriage. Each one of those states, more people voted for marriage than Romney. They had a contradictory vote: They voted for marriage and they voted for Barack Obama in great measure. Those are contradictory votes.

Why? Because Romney was a one-note candidate. Jobs and the economy. You'd ask him a question on what's he going to do on immigration: jobs and the economy. Benghazi: jobs and the economy. How did he all of sudden switch it back to jobs and the economy when we're talking about foreign affairs? He could not speak about life or marriage and so he didn't campaign in those states speaking about those issues and associating himself with marriage. Had he done so, his numbers would've gone up and I bet the marriage polls would've gone up.

Every time we get these mealy candidates like Romney or McCain, we have this problem and then Republican pundits come up and say, 'Oh, we need to change our position on marriage and abortion.'"

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Big Banks vs. Elizabeth Warren: It's On (Again!)

The fight between the financial industry and Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren heats up again over her possible nomination to the Senate banking committee.

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Nov. 19, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Ron Sachs/DPA/ZUMAPRESS.com

This story has been updated. Click here to read the update.

Not even two weeks have passed since Democrat Elizabeth Warren rode a wave of grassroots support to victory in the US Senate race in Massachusetts, ousting Republican incumbent Scott Brown. Senator-elect Warren has not yet hired her staff. She has not yet moved into her Senate office. But the banking industry is already taking aim at her, scurrying to curb her future clout on Capitol Hill.

Lobbyists and trade groups for Wall Street and other major banking players are pressuring lawmakers to deny Warren a seat on the powerful Senate banking committee. With the impending departures of Sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Democrats have two spots to fill on the committee before the 113th Congress gavels in next year. Warren has not yet said whether she wants to serve on the committee. But she would be a natural: She's a bankruptcy law expert, she served as Congress' lead watchdog overseeing the $700 billion bank bailout from 2008 to 2010, and she conceived of and helped launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

[Read the full article]

Watchdog: Rove-Founded Group Broke the Law By Not Disclosing Certain Donors

—By Andy Kroll

| Thu Nov. 15, 2012 10:45 AM PST

Karl Rove.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) claims that Crossroads GPS, the dark-money nonprofit co-founded by GOP political gurus Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, broke the law by not disclosing certain donors.

In complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission and the FBI, CREW says that Crossroads GPS—which spent more than $70 million on the 2012 elections—violated election law by not naming who funded Crossroads' ads in Ohio's Senate race between Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican Josh Mandel. Under current law, groups like Crossroads don't have to disclose who funds their ads if their donors don't earmark their money for a specific purpose—say, for an ad to run on Monday, November 6 attacking Sherrod Brown on the auto bailout. Of course, donors rarely give these kinds of instructions—they mostly fork over their money and let the experts do the work.

But CREW says some of Crossroads' Ohio Senate bankrollers should be revealed because they did earmark their donations. At an August fundraiser in Tampa, Rove told attendees that an anonymous out-of-state donor had pledged $3 million in matching money specifically to defeat Sherrod Brown. All Rove had to do was raise the other $3 million. "Bob Castellini, owner of the Cincinnati Reds, is helping raise the other $3 million for that one," Rove said, according to the Bloomberg Businessweek editor who attended the private fundraiser.

That unnamed $3 million donor should be revealed because he or she donated specifically to influence Ohio's Senate race, CREW contends. "Karl Rove and Crossroads GPS didn't just skirt around the edges of the law; this time it appears they jumped headlong into a criminal conspiracy," Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said in a statement.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio dismissed CREW's claims as politically-motivated nonsense. "CREW is a hyper-partisan, labor-funded front group that files frivolous complaints like this as part of its mission," Collegio wrote in an email. "Crossroads is aware of the laws governing the groups and follows all of them closely."

As a nonprofit, Crossroads GPS does not disclose any of its donors. The group was among the biggest-spending dark-money group of the 2012 election cycle. In all, $208 million in dark money was spent during the 2012 elections, according to the Sunlight Foundation. Eight out of every $10 in dark money went to benefit Republicans.

Obama Raised $300 Million With Big-Dollar Bundlers

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Nov. 9, 2012 12:25 PM PST

President Barack Obama decisively won a second term thanks to what he called "the best campaign team and volunteers in the history of politics." A critical part of Obama's cutting-edge political machine was the vaunted fundraising operation assembled by Obama's allies. Fueled by millions of small individual donations and big-dollar gifts from wealthy supporters, Obama's reelection effort raised north of $1 billion this election.

A tremendous, unprecedented grassroots fundraising effort accounted for a large chunk of this take. But Obama also pulled off a major big-money operation. He raised a staggering $300 million in top-dollar donations through an extensive network of so-called "bundlers," according to campaign spokeswoman Katie Hogan. These volunteer fundraisers gathered donations from friends, family, colleagues, and more, each collecting between $50,000 and millions of dollars for the campaign. At last count, the Obama campaign had 758 bundlers working on its behalf; the list included Vogue editor Anna Wintour, pop star Gwen Stefani, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.

Presidential candidates are not required to disclose their bundlers. The Obama campaign did so voluntarily throughout the 2012 campaign. The Romney campaign never revealed its bundlers.

Several Obama bundlers say the campaign's big-dollar fundraising was so successful that the campaign revised its goal upwards at least once. Hogan notes that "it is accurate to say the goal was increased, but I don't have more details about that."

The president raised money at a blistering, historic pace during the 2012 campaign. He attended a total of 220 reported fundraisers—more than any presidential candidate before him—between the launch of his reelection campaign launch in April 2011 and Election Day. At one point, in August of this year, Obama was attending, on average, one fundraiser every 60 hours.

Dick Harpootlian, an Obama bundler and the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, says Obama's fundraising operation was like nothing he'd seen in 40 years of politics. Matthew Barzun, the former US ambassador to Sweden who oversaw Obama's bundler network, was "extraordinary," Harpootlian says. "I can't overstate how effective his focus was on fundraising and the staff that he put together."

Harpootlian added: "This was better than [the] '08 [Obama campaign], and many of the people involved in '08 were involved in this. They've learned and grown."

A Midwest-based bundler says the campaign's fundraising operation made smart investments in staff and technology early in the campaign. "There was never a moment on the campaign that I recall where it felt like they were panicked about how they were fundraising," this bundler says.

Harpootlian echoes that sentiment. He says the campaign's fundraising team succeeded in raising big money early, knowing that smaller donations wouldn't flood in until later in the campaign when more people tuned into the race.

On the weekend before the election, the president's top fundraisers joined a conference call with Barzun and Obama. The two men offered their thanks for all the help raising this vast sum of money.

But Obama had another message for this elite group of supporters, according to Harpootlian. "A number of you are coming to Chicago" for Election Day, Obama said. "But we've got doors to knock in Wisconsin." Shortly after, an email went out to fundraisers with information about buses taking supporters into Wisconsin, and with phone numbers to call to get out the vote in key states.

"You know what?" Harpootlian says. "Everybody loved it."

And indeed, Harpootlian says, some bundlers did end up in Wisconsin on Election Day—before making their way to the celebration.

Koch-Backed Group Warns Chris Christie

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Nov. 9, 2012 11:30 AM PST

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

Conservatives are peeved at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a GOP favorite, for praising President Barack Obama response to Hurricane Sandy days before the election. Some right-wingers even blame Christie for boosting the president's prospects at the last minute. (Christie hugged Obama! How could he?!) Now, in the aftermath of the election, a powerhouse conservative outfit partly funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers is coming after Christie on another front, sharply questioning whether the governor will sell out conservatives in the latest battle over Obamacare.

The New Jersey Legislature passed a bill on October 18 creating a state-based online health insurance marketplace; it did so because under Obamacare a state must either create its own insurance marketplace or let the federal government do it. Christie vetoed a similar state-based insurance exchange bill in May, but he said last month he wouldn't decide what to do about the new bill until after Election Day.

Enter the New Jersey chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-backed conservative grassroots group. AFP-New Jersey is pressuring Christie to reject the state exchange bill and rebuff Obamacare's requirements before November 16, the date by which states must submit its health insurance plans to the federal government. Here's what AFP-New Jersey Steve Lonegan had to say about Christie in a press release zapped out two days after the election:

Barack Obama has been re-elected. Congress will not be able to repeal the law so now the burden is on the states to thwart it. That means these bureaucratic and costly exchanges must be stopped, along with the tax increases that come along with them.

Other conservative governors across the country like Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, and others have already taken a principled stand. Where is Governor Christie? Will he stand with them? Will he prevent New Jerseyans from having their health care choices controlled by federal bureaucrats? Will he allow our state’s struggling businesses to be hammered by Obamacare's tax penalties with unemployment hovering around 10 percent? Or will he continue to go along to get along with Barack Obama?

AFP-New Jersey seems suspicious about Christie. And that last line, of course, is a jab at Christie's buddying up with Obama during Sandy's aftermath. AFP-NJ is urging its supporters to lean on Christie by calling his office and signing an online petition demanding Christie say no to Obamacare.

This preemptive chastising of Christie is an odd turn in the Koch-Christie tale. The Koch brothers have long been fans of the governor. On June 26, 2011, as Mother Jones first reported, Christie delivered the keynote speech at Charles and David Koch's ultra-exclusive seminar at the Ritz-Carlton resort near Vail, Colorado. At the event, David Koch hailed Christie as a "true political hero." He noted,

Five months ago we met in my New York City office and spoke, just the two of us, for about two hours on his objectives and successes in correcting many of the most serious problems of the New Jersey state government. At the end of our conversation, I said to myself, "I'm really impressed and inspired by this man. He is my kind of guy."

David Koch praised Christie for pushing legislation that took away the right of public workers to bargain collectively for health benefits and for pulling New Jersey out of a regional cap-and-trade market created by 10 Northeastern states to curb industrial greenhouse gas emissions. He expressed his hope of seeing Christie "on a larger stage where, God knows, he is desperately needed."

That meant the 2012 presidential race. A September 26, 2011, New York Times article cited David Koch as part of a "small but influential group of Republican-leaning donors and activists" trying to coax Christie into the contest. The following month, though, Christie announced he wouldn't run in 2012.

Might Obamacare cause a split between Christie and Kochworld? Christie has yet to say, post-election, what he will do regarding the health insurance battle underway in his state. But the Koch-funded AFP has certainly warned him that there will be a price to be paid for any further pro-Obama apostasy.