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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The Enduring Mystery of GOP Megadonor Bob Perry

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Apr. 15, 2013 9:38 AM PDT

Bob Perry, the wealthy Texas homebuilder and Republican mega-donor who helped bankroll the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that attacked John Kerry's presidential campaign, died on Saturday night. He was 80 years old.

In 2012, I wrote a story about the Republican Governors Association, one of the many Republican causes to which Perry gave generously. During my reporting on the RGA, I interviewed an Austin attorney named Buck Wood who'd once crossed paths with Perry. Wood told me a head-scratcher of a story that, while hardly definitive, struck me as useful to understanding Perry's place in GOP politics.

In the mid-2000s, Wood represented Chris Bell, a trial lawyer who'd run as the Democratic candidate in Texas' 2006 gubernatorial election. Late in the race, Bell's opponent, Gov. Rick Perry, received a $1 million donation from the RGA—an infusion that may well have contributed to Perry's nine-point win. Bell believed that the $1 million originated with Bob Perry (no relation to Rick), and that Perry funneled the money through the RGA to Rick Perry's campaign to wipe his fingerprints and avoid causing a fuss about such a big donation. (The RGA denied all this.) Bell sued the RGA in November 2007 for allegedly violating state campaign finance law.

Wood, Bell's attorney, visited Bob Perry in Houston to depose him in the case. The two met in a conference room next to Perry's personal office. Perry was pleasant, seemingly unbothered. Before the questioning began, Wood pointed out an aerial photograph on the wall of a new development in Austin built by Perry Homes. Perry looked at the picture, Wood recalled, studying it for an uncomfortably long time. "Yeah, that looks like one of our developments," Perry replied unconvincingly, according to Wood. In the deposition, Perry recalled little about his RGA donations. Yes, that was his signature on the checks, he said, but he didn't remember writing them.

Wood ended the deposition convinced that Perry really didn't remember his $1 million donation to the RGA. He suspected that someone in Perry's office, not the man himself, was handling Perry's large political portfolio, as it were. "I wanted to know who was running the show so I could depose them," he said. Wood asked a few local reporters if they knew anything more about the political affairs over at Perry Homes; he got nothing.

Perry went on to give tens of millions more to Republicans after the 2006 gubernatorial election. The 2010 Citizens United case freed Perry to give even more, which he did, doling out more than $20 million to super-PACs in 2012. When I spoke to Buck Wood on Monday morning, he told me he still didn't have a clue who handled Perry's political affairs, if it wasn't Perry himself. All these years later, Bob Perry was still something of an mystery.

Perry preferred it that way. Here's an excerpt of an April 2007 Texas Monthly profile that offered a rare glimpse inside Perry's world:

Unseen by the public, uninvolved with his candidates, the most powerful political donor in the nation has until now remained largely an enigma. Few apart from a small circle of close friends in Houston know much about him. What they do know may surprise some people. For instance, Perry favors affirmative action. He has given money to Democrats, particularly black and Latino Democrats. He opposes his party’s hard line on immigration rights. He is a large-scale donor to an inner-city Houston foundation sponsored by a liberal black minister and to an educational scholarship program for Hispanic students founded by a liberal professor. So who is Bob Perry? Is he the monolithic, unyielding, far-right ideologue he is often portrayed to be? A philanthropist who gives generously to causes he believes in? Some hybrid of the two? Almost nobody knows, and that’s the way he likes it.

As under the radar as he was, Perry loomed large in Republican politics, in Texas and nationwide. His passing leaves the GOP without one of its biggest financial supporters.

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California's Dark-Money Investigation Is Making Conservatives Sweat

Details of a shadowy donor network emerge as Golden State watchdogs trace the source of $11 million in election spending.

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Apr. 15, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Investigators with California's election watchdog and attorney general's office are hot on the trail of the true source of millions in dark money spent to defeat two hard-fought ballot propositions last fall. The wide-ranging probe has conservatives worried that a network of nonprofit groups used to move secret money around the country could be in for some unwanted exposure.

The investigation, led by the state's nonpartisan Fair Political Practices Commission, has already done more than most watchdogs to pry open the black box of the conservative dark-money groups that spent freely in 2012 without disclosing the sources of their money. Last fall, the FPPC revealed what it called "the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history" after it discovered that three nonprofits had funneled $11 million from Virginia to Arizona to California.

As the probe progresses, some conservatives are nervous that more details—such as the identities of actual donors—could be publicized. "This case has got very, very deep and significant implications," says a conservative lobbyist with knowledge of the investigation. "A lot of folks are going to have their dirty laundry hung out, and it's not going to be pretty. Why would money go through such a circuitous route if not to conceal the donors?"

[Read the full article]

The Ready for Hillary Super-PAC Is the Real Deal

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Apr. 8, 2013 7:24 AM PDT

Hillary Clinton

Ready for Hillary, the fledgling super-PAC committed to nudging Hillary Clinton into the 2016 presidential race and electing her the country's 45th president, was initially met with furrowed brows. A Hillary super-PAC this early? Is this a legit group or a love letter from adoring fans?

Ready for Hillary appears to be the real thing. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Harold Ickes, the longtime aide to Bill and Hillary and Democratic fundraiser extraordinaire, is advising Ready for Hillary. Another Clinton White House alum, James Carville, is also helping the super-PAC.

Enlisting Ickes is a coup for Ready for Hillary, the most high-profile of the three pro-Hillary super-PACs. He's one of the most tireless, tenacious fundraisers in Democratic politics, with thick skin and an even thicker Rolodex. Here's an excerpt from my 2012 profile of Ickes:

In early 2011, Sean Sweeney and Bill Burton, the former Obama White House aides who cofounded Priorities USA Action (a painfully bland name they settled on, as Burton told the New York Times Magazine, because their first 60 choices were already taken), enlisted Ickes to help close that gap. A fiery and highly respected Democratic operative who's worked on more than a dozen presidential campaigns and inside the White House, Ickes is a savvy and dogged fundraiser with a reputation for pulling in big money—the kind of seven- and eight-figure checks needed to compete with Rove's Crossroads groups and Charles and David Koch's extensive donor network. His connections run deep in Washington and in the insular, prickly world of Democratic donors, especially Clinton supporters. Ickes served as deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and advised Hillary during her Senate and presidential campaigns; indeed, Ickes was tapped to plan her first Senate campaign on the same day in 1998 that the Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment against Bill. Clinton donors trust Ickes with their millions, and those millions are crucial to any outside Democratic effort.

Ickes, who turns 73 in September, works out of a sleek office near Dupont Circle that he and his longtime aide-de-camp, Janice Enright, share with a handful of lobbying and consulting shops. (Ickes and Enright have worked in the same room since their days in the Clinton White House.) His purple hounds-tooth shirt is open to the third button, and he occasionally pulls a comb through his thinning auburn hair. He closes his steel blue eyes when beginning a story, then opens them and stares into yours to make a point. He digresses easily and peppers his sentences with "fuck" and "bullshit."

"He is a brilliant, take-no-prisoners, consummate political operative who has seen everything, done almost everything, and is still standing," says Rob Stein, founder of the Democracy Alliance donor network. "There's nobody like him in the Democratic ranks."

Burton and Sweeney certainly seem to think so, having brought Ickes on to hunt for big donations. It's a tall order, even for an experienced fundraiser. Loyal Democratic donors loathe the Citizens United decision and the Wild West campaign finance landscape it helped usher in, and they recoil from super-PACs. Some feel Obama hasn't courted his donors sufficiently. Others simply aren't yet fired up enough to write checks. Yet without that outside ammunition, Obama and congressional Democrats face the prospect of drowning in a deluge of Republican money. GOP super-PACs and nonprofits could wrest control of the Senate from the Democrats—and they could make the difference between a second Obama term and a Romney presidency.

Of course, Ickes and the Priorities USA team went on to great success in the 2012 campaign. They may not have outraised and outspent the Republicans—Sheldon Adelson made sure of that—but they collected enough money and spent it wisely enough to tarnish Mitt Romney's image and give the Obama campaign vital air cover in Ohio.

Ickes told me recently that Clintonland is abuzz with questions and speculation about Hillary running. Many Democratic donors, he went on, are waiting on the sidelines to see what she does. "A lot of the people I know, a lot of them are Hillary people to begin with, but boy, they're not about to part with a dollar till they see what she's going to do," he said.

If she runs, you can bet that Ready for Hillary will be welcoming all those donors with open arms.

How Walmart, ExxonMobil, and Coke Buy Latino Friends in Congress

Lobbyists and corporations that employ them can't give gifts to lawmakers—unless they funnel the money through a nonprofit.

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Apr. 8, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

In late February, some 70 guests arrived for dinner at a hotel near Washington, DC's Union Station. Nine members of Congress were there, including Reps. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas), Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), and Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Calif.), as was former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Also in attendance were lobbyists and executives for Fortune 500 companies and big industry trade groups. Lonnie Johnson, a lobbyist for ExxonMobil, sat next to Hinojosa at dinner; Walmart lobbyist Ivan Zapien gave the closing remarks. Exxon, American Gas Association, Darden Restaurants, and Coca-Cola had underwritten the event. That was how, seven weeks into the 113th Congress—as lawmakers began work on immigration reform and a tax code overhaul—powerful corporate lobbyists scored premium access to politicians.

The dinner was organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, an obscure offshoot of the 27-member, all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus. (Caucuses are factions of lawmakers formed around an issue or ideology, such as the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus, and the Tea Party Caucus.) The CHCI, founded in 1978 by a small group of Hispanic lawmakers, says its mission is to "develop the next generation of Latino leaders" by underwriting scholarships and fellowship programs for young Latinos, funding college readiness courses for them, and placing them in jobs and internships on Capitol Hill. But like other nonprofits nominally affiliated with congressional caucuses, CHCI sells access to influential lawmakers in exchange for big donations.

[Read the full article]

Missouri Lawmaker: No Welfare If Your Kid Gets Mono or Depression

—By Andy Kroll

| Fri Apr. 5, 2013 11:02 AM PDT

Missouri Rep. Steve Cookson, a Republican, caused a stir last year when he offered a bill to ban any discussion of sexual orientation in public schools outside of traditional sex ed and science instruction. That meant teachers couldn't talk about gay and lesbian issues during class, and gay-straight alliances couldn't meet during the school day. Critics called it the "don't say gay" bill. It died in committee.

Now, Cookson is back in the news for introducing another controversial bill. Children of welfare recipients can't miss more than 10 percent of their classes—roughly three weeks of school—or their family loses welfare benefits. The bill, which would amend the state's welfare statute, is a single sentence long:

School age children of welfare recipients must attend public school, unless physically disabled, at least ninety percent of the time in order to receive benefits.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks it's OK to skip three weeks' worth class during the school year. But what about an unexpected illness like mono or clinical depression? Cookson has yet to clarify what exactly qualifies for the "physically disabled" exemption in his bill. And so unless mono qualifies as a physical disability, the critics who deride Cookson's bill the "don't get sick" bill make a fair point. A entire family could lose its state assistance if their kid got mono from a classmate.

As the Kansas City Star notes, state Republicans, which control the Missouri General Assembly, recently named Cookson the chair of the House education committee. That means his "don't get sick" bill could get a full airing on the House floor.