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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Handicapping the Wisconsin Recall Elections

Badger State Democrats are trying to win at least three recall races on Tuesday. What are the odds?

—By Andy Kroll

| Mon Aug. 8, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

Never before in American politics have voters recalled more than two state legislators in a single year. That record could be broken on Tuesday, when Wisconsinites vote to decide the fate of six Republican state senators who voted for Gov. Scott Walker's conservative, anti-union agenda. Democrats need to win three of these recall races (and defend two more in another round of recalls next week) to reclaim a majority in the state Senate and throw a wrench into Walker's political machine.

Publicly, Wisconsin Democrats are oozing confidence. Mike Tate, chair of the state party, told reporters last week that internal polling showed Democratic challengers ahead in three races and tied in the rest. Jessica King, who is running to unseat GOP Sen. Randy Hopper in District 18, has predicted that Democrats would win all six races.

But in private, representatives of left-leaning groups are biting their nails about the razor-thin margins separating Democrats and Republicans in several of the races. These officials, who requested anonymity so they could speak candidly, strongly believe Democrats will claim at least two seats. Three races are too close to call, and they're writing off another as all but impossible.

Here's a breakdown of the six recall races, starting with the ones progressive insiders think Democrats are most likely win.

[Read the full article]

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VIDEO: Tea Partiers Cheer the Downgrade of America's Credit Rating

—By Andy Kroll

| Sun Aug. 7, 2011 7:24 PM PDT

Is the tea party happy that Standard and Poor's, the credit rating agency, downgraded the United States' credit rating for the first time ever?

You'd think that was the case if you were in the crowd at a tea party rally in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, on Sunday morning. The Tea Party Express rolled into that northeastern city as part of its tour to bolster the six GOP state senators facing recall elections on Tuesday. But the most shocking moment of the event wasn't the vitriol spouted by tea party leaders, which has dominated news of the tour stops in recent days. Instead it was the cheers that erupted when one of the Tea Party Express' speakers described the recent downgrade as the tea party's fault.

Here's what happened: Midway through the Fond du Lac event, Florida talk show host Andrea Shea King took the stage. She told the audience that commentators were describing the downgrade of US debt to AA+ from AAA as the "tea party downgrade," laying the blame squarely on Congress' right-wing faction and its supporters. But rather than boo those who claim the tea party caused the downgrade, the 200 or so Wisconsinites in attendance cheered, sounding almost proud to be blamed for the downgrade.

Here's the video:

And here's the transcript:

SHEA KING: This week—I wrote it down—they are blaming the credit downgrade on the tea party movement.

CROWD: Yeah! [Cheers, clapping]

SHEA KING: They are calling it "the tea party downgrade." They are objectivizing [sic] us.

There you have it. At least here in Wisconsin, tea partiers are pleased that the full faith and credit of America took a knock, and are more than happy to take full credit for it.

Tea Party Leader: Liberalism Has "Killed a Billion" People

—By Andy Kroll

| Sun Aug. 7, 2011 9:19 AM PDT

Yesterday I reported that Judson Phillips, the founder of the Tea Party Nation group now touring Wisconsin to support the six GOP state senators facing recall elections on Tuesday, compared Wisconsinites who protested Republican Gov. Scott Walker to Adolf Hitler's Nazi storm troopers. The day before, Phillips claimed Democrats in Wisconsin wanted to "break the back of conservatives in Wisconsin" with the recalls.

But at an event on Saturday, Phillips amped up the vitriol and hate even more. As Politico reports, Phillips told a north Milwaukee crowd that "the left" and its beliefs have "killed a billion people in the last century." Here is Phillips' complete statement: "I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me."

Phillips wasn't the only one spewing this stuff. From Politico:

Vince Schmuki, a leader of the Ozaukee Patriot tea party group compared the recall effort to a terrorist attack.

"This is ground zero," said Schmuki. "You remember what the term ground zero means? We have been attacked."

He continued, "Tuesday is going to be the beginning of our takeover. And we're going to follow it up the following week and then we're going to polish off the enemy in November 2012. Who's with me?"

I'm at a Tea Party Express rally in North Fond du Lac right now, so stay tuned for more fireworks this afternoon.

The Summer of Scott Walker

Democrats say divided government is better than Walker's conservative agenda. Will voters buy it?

—By Andy Kroll

| Sat Aug. 6, 2011 8:30 PM PDT

Imagine, for a moment, an alternate history in Wisconsin. What if Republican Gov. Scott Walker hadn't tried to wipe out public-sector unions and sic the National Guard on those who opposed him mere weeks after taking office? Would this summer's recall elections still have occurred, giving Democrats the chance to reclaim control of the state Senate less than a year after the 2010 Republican landslide?

It's hard to envision the political turmoil now roiling the Badger State without the hundreds of thousands of protesters who poured into Madison this winter, occupying the state capitol and jamming the streets in response to Walker's assault on workers' rights. But from the ads flooding the airwaves, the flyers filling mailboxes, and the candidates' stump speeches, you wouldn't know that a fight over collective bargaining rights sparked Wisconsin's recall elections. While not forgotten, workers' rights have receded to the background as education, health care, voter disenfranchisement, and budget cuts dominate the debate. "Both sides don't seem to want to fight their recall battles on the original turf," says Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

[Read the full article]

Tea Party Leader: Wisconsin Liberal Protesters Are Modern-Day Storm Troopers

—By Andy Kroll

| Sat Aug. 6, 2011 7:48 AM PDT

The Tea Party Nation is one of four right-wing groups touring Wisconsin this weekend in a last-ditch effort to bolster the six GOP state senators facing recall on August 9. It's anyone's guess if if the tour will make any difference—attendance at a Friday tour stop looked middling—but Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips won't let that stop him from stirring controversy.

Writing on Tea Party Nation's website Saturday morning, Phillips compares the Wisconsinites who recently protested Republican Gov. Scott Walker at the state fair (many of whom wore red t-shirts) to Adolf Hitler's storm troopers in Nazi Germany. That's right:

A few days ago, Governor Walker showed up to open the state fair. This was not a political event. It is one of those ceremonial events that a governor is obligated to do. His remarks were not political and in fact, consisted mostly of saying, "I declare the state fair to be open."

The Wisconsin Red shirts, the left's modern version of Brown shirts, were there to shout Walker down and generally ruin the fair for as many people as they could.

"Brownshirts" was the name given to the paramilitary wing of the German Nazi Party, known as the Sturmabteilung, or SA. The SA was founded by Hitler in the early 1920s. They earned their name because their uniforms were said to resemble those of Benito Mussolini's "Black Shirts," the armed squads who violently enforced Mussolini's fascist agenda. The brownshirts attacked Jews and non-Nazi Germans in the streets and suppressed any hint of opposition; their violent intimidation tactics helped fuel Hitler's ascent to power.

The liberals-as-Nazi-storm-troopers comparison wasn't Phillips' only attack in his Saturday missive, though it is his most incendiary. He also branded the people who protested the tea party tour as "not the brightest people," "paid union protestors," and as having "George Soros' money in their pockets." (Soros, of course, is conservatives' biggest bugaboo.) On Friday, Phillips accused liberals of wanting to "break the back of conservatives here in Wisconsin" through the recall process while also pushing Wisconsin toward financial ruin.

Amazingly, Phillips isn't the first to make this kind of comparison. In February, a posting on the site of Patriot Action Network, one of the four groups now touring Wisconsin, called the Service Employees International Union "Obama's brown shirts." And in March, Katherine Kersten, a fellow at a conservative Minnesota think tank called the Center of the American Experiment, asked in the pages of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune if the protesters at the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison were "Nazi brownshirts at work, busting up a meeting of political opponents in 1933 Germany?"