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.

Get my RSS | Follow @andrewkroll

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.

Advertise on MotherJones.com

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.

Will Republican Megadonors Say Sayonara to Super-PACs?

Liberal bankrollers soured on partisan politics after the 2004 elections. Will Adelson and Co. follow suit after 2012?

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Nov. 9, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Sheldon Adelson, left, and George Soros

Can't buy me gov.

That line neatly sums up the dismal showing on Election Day for the fundraisers, super-PAC strategists, and big-dollar donors of the Republican Party. Outside groups spent north of $1 billion this campaign season—bankrolled mostly by a small cadre of wealthy contributors—and yet they and their funders, especially on the Republican side, were left with little to show for it when the sun rose Wednesday morning. The GOP's flagship super-PAC, Karl Rove's American Crossroads, had an abysmal 1 percent return on its $104 million investment. Megadonor Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, invested $57 million in 2012 races; only 42 percent of the candidates who received Adelson support won. Other big donors—say, Romney super-PAC backers—got nothing for their money.

[Read the full article]

Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin Writes Her Way Into the History Books

—By Andy Kroll

| Wed Nov. 7, 2012 11:02 AM PST

Senator-elect Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

There she goes again, making history.

Liberal congresswoman Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin ended Republican Tommy Thompson's four-decade political career, winning 51 percent of the vote on Tuesday in the state's bitterly fought US Senate race. Baldwin will be the first openly gay senator in the institution's history and Wisconsin's first female senator, just as she became the first openly gay Wisconsin State assemblywoman in 1992, and the first openly gay candidate to win a US House election in 1998. Baldwin knows the significance of her election: "Sometimes I think my most significant contribution is not the legislative initiatives I introduce, but the stereotypes I shatter."

Baldwin said that in 1993. During her victory speech Tuesday night, she downplayed her history-making win. "I didn't run to make history; I ran to make a difference," she said. "A difference in the lives of students worried about debt and seniors worried about their retirement security."

That comment speaks volumes about the campaign run by Baldwin and her team. They didn't tout Baldwin as a pathbreaker; instead they pitched her to Wisconsinites across the state as a champion of working people and an avowed defender of Wisconsin manufacturing.

Baldwin's first campaign ad set the tone: It was a broadside against China's currency manipulation and a full-throated defense of Wisconsin's paper industry. "In Wisconsin, we lead the entire nation in paper industry jobs," Baldwin said. "But China, they lead the world in cheating." You could imagine a tea partier saying that—but a Democrat from Dane County, Wisconsin, a bastion of liberalism "surrounded by reality"?

Political experts praised Baldwin's decision to focus on economics and jobs. "You're talking about someone stepping outside the stereotypes and representing herself in a way that is right up the alley of job creation," Charles Franklin, a political scientist who oversees Marquette University's polling, told me this summer. "I don't think you can win on just the paper issue, but she's chosen the issue that seems to me to have the potential for much broader appeal."

Baldwin's focus on manufacturing and blue-collar workers, and also the discipline and hard work I saw her put in on the trail this summer paid off in the end. "I think Tammy ran a flawless race," Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "She was unflappable."

Tommy Thompson...not so much. He courted controversy during his campaign by, for instance, claiming he was the man to "do away with Medicare." His years as a Washington lobbyist and the money he made from that gig dogged him all the way to Election Day. (Wisconsin Democrats made sure of that.)

Thompson, who served four terms as Wisconsin governor, also began his battle with Baldwin short on cash after a tough primary fight. He raised $7.4 million for his Senate campaign, well short of Baldwin's $12.6 million haul. As the general election got underway Baldwin used her financial advantage to blitz the airwaves with ads supporting her. Both candidates saw outside money-funded ads hammer them. Of the $66 million spent in the Baldwin-Thompson race—a state record, by the way—almost $46 million came from super-PACs and nonprofit groups.

Thompson led Baldwin in the polls right after his mid-August primary win, but Baldwin's barrage and finely tuned message paid off. She took the lead in the race in late September, and never relinquished it.