by Jane Mayer
“The relationship between”: Marcus Owens was interviewed by Jon Campbell, who first wrote about the unusual relationship between Bopp and the James Madison Center in “James Bopp Jr. Gets Creative: How Does the Conservative Maestro of Campaign Finance Fund His Legal Work?,” Slate.com, Oct. 5, 2012.
“Soft money”: Betsy DeVos, “Soft Money Is Good: Hard-earned American Dollars That Big Brother Has Yet to Find a Way to Control,” Roll Call, Sept. 6, 1997.
In 2004, Democratic-aligned outside groups: Trevor Potter, “The Current State of Campaign Finance Laws,” Brookings Campaign Finance Sourcebook, 2005.
Leading the pack: For more on Soros’s spending in the 2004 presidential election, see Mayer, “Money Man.”
“was really Jim”: David Kirkpatrick, “A Quest to End Spending Rules for Campaigns,” New York Times, Jan. 24, 2010. Theodore Olson, a far better litigator than Bopp, argued the crucial oral argument in front of the Supreme Court.
“We had a 10-year plan”: Ibid.
With his shaggy gray: Stephanie Mencimer, “The Man Who Took Down Campaign Finance Reform,” Mother Jones, Jan. 21, 2010. Mencimer recounts that in 2008 the U.S. District Court judge Royce Lamberth “actually laughed at Bopp.”
Clint Bolick, a pioneer: See Teles, Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, 87.
While polls consistently showed: According to a poll conducted by ABC News on February 17, 2010, eight out of ten Americans surveyed opposed the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision.
“I would not have been”: Bradley Smith, interview with author.
The litigation, meanwhile: Robert Mullins, “Racine Labor Center: Meeting Place for Organized Labor on the Ropes,” Milwaukee Business Journal, Dec. 23, 1991.
He had been the Senate’s premier: In 2002, Senators Russell Feingold and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, co-authored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known as McCain-Feingold, which Citizens United largely undid.
“This Supreme Court decision”: “Changes Have Money Talking Louder Than Ever in Midterms,” New York Times, Oct. 7, 2010.
“not true”: Technically, Citizens United said nothing about what foreign corporations could do, so some nonpartisan fact-checkers said Alito was right to object to Obama’s description of the ruling as opening the doors to foreign spending. But the Citizens United decision did open a way for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations to spend unlimited sums in American campaigns.
“It unshackled the big money”: David Axelrod, interview with author.
CHAPTER TEN: THE SHELLACKING
Although Brown was a low-profile: See Brian Mooney, “Late Spending Frenzy Fueled Senate Race,” Boston Globe, Jan. 24, 2010. The total spending by Brown and his opponent, Martha Coakley, in the Senate race was roughly equal, but while Coakley benefited from a large amount of cash from conventional Democratic Party committees, Brown got no money from GOP committees. The $2.6 million in contributions he got from outside conservative groups, which was almost $1 million more than Coakley got from outside spending groups, played a crucial role in filling this gap.
Two of the most active: According to Steve Leblanc’s report for the Associated Press, Feb. 19, 2010, the American Future Fund spent $618,000 against Martha Coakley, and Americans for Job Security—a group that would receive $4.8 million from the Center to Protect Patient Rights in 2010—spent $460,000 on ads against Coakley. Together with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s $1 million in last-minute ads, those three groups made up the bulk of the $2.6 million spent by conservative outside groups in the last twelve days of the campaign.
“We thought we had it won”: Participant who spoke on the grounds that he not be identified, interview with author.
Its clients ranged: Ed Gillespie said he never supported the individual mandates, even though his firm represented the coalition of companies that suggested the plan. See James Hohmann, “Ed Gillespie’s Steep Slog to the Senate,” Politico, Jan. 13, 2014.
Within weeks, he set out: Vogel, Big Money, 47, describes the meeting at the Dallas Petroleum Club in greater detail.
“People call us”: Ken Vogel, “Politics, Karl Rove and the Modern Money Machine,” Politico, July/August 2014.
“It was all conceived”: Glenn Thrush, “Obama’s States of Despair: 2010 Losses Still Haunt,” Politico, July 26, 2013.
By the end of 2010: See Olga Pierce, Justin Elliott, and Theodoric Meyer, “How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the House and Hurt Voters,” ProPublica, Dec. 21, 2012.
“It was three yards”: See Nicholas Confessore, “A National Strategy Funds State Political Monopolies,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 2014.
In the previous decade: The $40 million spending figure is according to an analysis of tax records by Democracy NC, a progressive government watchdog group.
“He was a terrible candidate”: Bob Geary, interview with author, which first appeared in Jane Mayer, “State for Sale,” New Yorker, Oct. 10, 2011.
“I’m not a charismatic”: Art Pope, interview with author, which first appeared in ibid.
Under his guidance: See Ted Gup, “Fakin’ It,” Mother Jones, May/June 1996. He writes that homemade-looking placards were in fact FedExed to the smokers’ rights groups from the tobacco company executives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
In 1994 alone: Peter Stone describes the organization of smokers’ rights groups in his piece, “The Nicotine Network,” Mother Jones, May/June 1996.
In 2012, he pleaded guilty: Ellis pleaded guilty in June 2012 to a felony charge of making an illegal campaign contribution. In the plea deal, he received four years of probation and was fined $10,000. He says it is his understanding that following the probationary period, in 2016, further adjudication may dismiss the charge.
“The grass roots was designed”: Jim Ellis, interview with author.
At a second Capitol Hill rally: Sam Stein, “Tea Party Protests—‘Ni**er,’ ‘Fa**ot’ Shouted at Members of Congress,” Huffington Post, March 20, 2010.
“You know they’re gonna”: Halperin and Heilemann, Double Down, 13.
“We made a deliberate”: Johnson, “Inside the Koch-Funded Ads Giving Dems Fits.”
About a third of this: The forms showed TC4 sending money to what accountants call “disregarded entities,” so that instead of appearing to go to CPPR, it went to two phantom limbs called Eleventh Edition LLC and American Commitment. See Viveca Novak, Robert Maguire, and Russ Choma, “Nonprofit Funneled Money to Kochs’ Voter Database Effort, Other Conservative Groups,” OpenSecrets.org, Dec. 21, 2012.
Previously, they had given: The main such “social welfare” group the Kochs supported prior to 2010 was Americans for Prosperity, which they only moderately funded during the Bush years. Instead, they had donated mostly to what the IRS defined as charitable organizations, or 501(c)(3)s, for which they could take tax deductions and which were more strictly barred from electoral politics.
For example, at the end of 2010: The Center for Responsive Politics first reported on the fact that the Center to Protect Patient Rights reported no spending on politics in its 2010 IRS 990 tax form. Kim Barker did an excellent, extensive report later, “How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call It Public Welfare,” ProPublica, Aug. 18, 2012, describing the phenomenon in further detail.
Yet it granted $103 million: These spending figures cover the years 2009 to 2011 and include the TC4 Trust.
In 2006, only 2 percent: These sums were calculated by the Center for Responsive Politics and exclude spending by party committees.
“The political players”: Barker, “How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call It Public Welfare.”
Some joked that they attended: Steven Law said several attendees, including himself, “went so they could tell their friends they went to Karl Rove’s house.” Joe Hagan, “Goddangit, Baby, We’re Making Good Time,” New York, Feb. 27, 2011.
“the birthplace of a new”: Vogel, Big Money, 49.
Working closely with both:
Bloomberg reported, for instance, that in 2009 and 2010 the health insurance industry secretly funneled over $86 million into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for attack ads. Drew Armstrong, “Health Insurers Gave $86 Million to Fight Health Law,” Bloomberg, Nov. 17, 2010.
“there wasn’t one race”: Vogel, Big Money, 53.
“in order of the likelihood”: Eliana Johnson, “Inside the Koch-Funded Ads Giving Dems Fits,” National Review.com, March 31, 2014.
Efforts to track down: Jim Rutenberg, Don Van Natta Jr., and Mike McIntire, “Offering Donors Secrecy, and Going on Attack,” New York Times, Oct. 11, 2010.
“has no purpose”: Mike McIntire, “Under Tax-Exempt Cloak, Political Dollars Flow,” New York Times, Sept. 23, 2010.
In addition, Noble directed millions: In 2010, Noble’s CPPR distributed $31 million—just under half of its funds—to five conservative groups that then spent similar amounts on TV ads targeting fifty-eight House Democratic candidates. The groups were the American Future Fund ($11.6 million), the 60 Plus Association ($8.9 million), Americans for Job Security ($4.8 million), Americans for Tax Reform ($4.1 million), and Revere America ($2.3 million). CPPR provided at least one-third of the budget raised by each of those five groups that year. CPPR’s next-largest expenses were $10.3 million for “communications and surveys” and $5.5 million to Americans for Limited Government, which sent out mailings attacking House Democrats.
“For the first time”: Pooley, Climate War, 406.
“The Koch brothers went after me”: Rick Boucher, interview with author.
McCarthy was an old hand: Larry McCarthy declined to comment.
“Larry is not just”: Floyd Brown, interview with author, which first appeared in Jane Mayer, “Attack Dog,” New Yorker, Feb. 13, 2012.
“serial offender”: Geoff Garin, interview with author, which first appeared in ibid.
“a war”: Jonathan Alter, “Schwarzman: ‘It’s a War’ Between Obama, Wall St.,” Newsweek, Aug. 15, 2010.
“You have no idea”: James B. Stewart, “The Birthday Party,” New Yorker, Feb. 11, 2008.
A 2007 Wall Street Journal profile: Henry Sender and Monica Langley, “How Blackstone’s Chief Became $7 Million Man,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2007.
The media sensation: Even business publications ran columns blasting the loophole. See Martin Sosnoff, “The $3 Billion Birthday Party,” Forbes, June 21, 2007.
over $6 billion a year: Randall Dodd, “Tax Breaks for Billionaires,” Economic Policy Institute, July 24, 2007.
“Hedge funds really need”: Asness’s open letter was written earlier, in May 2009, and was criticizing Obama for demonizing hedge funds for not going along with his administration’s attempt to restructure Chrysler. See Clifford Asness, “Unafraid in Greenwich Connecticut,” Business Insider, May 5, 2009.
“the closest thing”: Andrew Miga, “Rich Spark Soft Money Surge—Financier Typifies New Type of Donor,” Boston Herald, Nov. 29, 1999.
According to later reports: See Michael Isikoff and Peter Stone, “How Wall Street Execs Bankrolled GOP Victory,” NBC News, Jan. 5, 2011.
eleven were on Forbes’s list: They were as follows:
Charles Koch: $44.7 billion
David Koch: $44.7 billion
Steve Schwarzman: $11.3 billion
Philip Anschutz: $11 billion
Ken Griffin: $7 billion
Richard DeVos: $5.8 billion
Diane Hendricks: $3.6 billion
Ken Langone: $2.9 billion
Steve Bechtel: $2.7 billion
Stan Hubbard: $2 billion
Joe Craft: $1.4 billion
“target-rich”: Paul Abowd, “Donors Use Charity to Push Free-Market Policies in States,” Center for Public Integrity, Feb. 14, 2013.
By the end of the meal: Kenneth Vogel and Simmi Aujla, “Koch Conference Under Scrutiny,” Politico, Jan. 27, 2011.
“one hell of a wake-up call”: See Sam Stein, “$200 Million GOP Campaign Avalanche Planned, Democrats Stunned,” Huffington Post, July 8, 2010.
“It was clear”: Anita Dunn, interview with author.
As late as May: David Axelrod, conversation with author, May 2010.
“dropped on me”: Bruce Braley, interview with author, which first appeared in Mayer, “Attack Dog.”
In 2010, Americans for Prosperity: See Fang, Machine, 174. He describes attending the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference and seeing attendees taught to use video cameras “to harass Democratic officials until their inevitable outbursts were caught on tape.” He writes that several conservative groups held training sessions in the ambush video technique, according to attendees at their functions, including Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and American Majority.
Only in 2011 did it surface: See Ben Smith, “Hedge Fund Figure Financed Mosque Campaign,” Politico, Jan. 18, 2011. Smith credits his colleague Maggie Haberman with figuring out the money trail.
“I voted to help build”: Mayer, “State for Sale.”
Pope was instrumental: The racially charged ad was produced by the North Carolina Republican Party. Pope said that he was not involved in its creation, but he and three members of his family gave the Davis campaign a $4,000 check each—the maximum individual donation allowed by state law. Pope told ProPublica that his $200,000 donation to Real Jobs NC was not for the REDMAP operation, or redistricting work. A lawsuit filed after the election concerning the redistricting effort, however, revealed that Pope consulted on how the borders were drawn. See Pierce, Elliott, and Meyer, “How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the House and Hurt Voters.”
“We didn’t have that before 2010”: Mayer, “State for Sale.”
“Those ads hurt me”: Ibid.
“If you put all of the Pope groups”: Ibid.
“People throw around terms”: Art Pope, interview with author, which first appeared in Mayer, “State for Sale.”
“The Obama team”: Thrush, “Obama’s States of Despair.”
“We lost all hope”: David Corn, Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party (William Morrow, 2012), 44.
The conventional wisdom: See a more detailed description of the debate over blaming dark money in ibid., 40.
“a 5,700-square-foot, eight-bedroom house”: Jonathan Salant, “Secret Political Cash Moves Through Nonprofit Daisy Chain,” Bloomberg News, Oct. 15, 2012.
PART THREE: PRIVATIZING POLITICS
“There’s class warfare all right”: Ben Stein, “In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning,” New York Times, Nov. 26, 2006.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE SPOILS
whose donor network had spent: The figure $130.7 million represents the 2009–2010 spending by the Center to Protect Patient Rights ($72 million), the TC4 Trust ($38.5 million), and Americans for Prosperity ($38.5 million), deducting the money passed back and forth among these three nonprofits to avoid double counting, as reported by the groups’ IRS filings.
“Charles and David Koch no longer”: Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey, and Neela Banerjee, “Koch Brothers Now at Heart of GOP Power,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 6, 2011.
those with massive financial resources: Freeland, Plutocrats.
“The more Republicans depend”: Lee Drutman, “Are the 1% of the 1% Pulling Politics in a Conservative Direction?,” Sunlight Foundation, June 26, 2013.
“radicalization of the party’s donor base”: For more on the implications of the “rise of the radical rich,” as Frum terms it, see David Frum, “Crashing the Party: Why the GOP Must Modernize to Win,” Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. 2014.
“took the biggest leap”: Skocpol, Naming the Problem, 92.
Now the new Republican leadership: The contributions and influence of the Kochs over the committee were first detailed by Hamburger, Hennessey, and Banerjee, “Koch Brothers Now at Heart of GOP Power.”
signed an unusual pledge: Lewis et al., “Koch Millions Spread Influence Through Nonprofits, Colleg
es.”
“No Climate Tax” pledge: See Eric Holmberg and Alexia Fernandez Campbell, “Koch Climate Pledge Strategy Continues to Grow,” Investigative Reporting Workshop, July 1, 2013.
By then, the 1980 Superfund law: For more on the defunding of the Superfund program, see Charlie Cray and Peter Montague, “Kingpins of Carbon and Their War on Democracy,” Greenpeace, Sept. 2014, 26.
“rejected in a class action suit”: See “Crossett, Arkansas—Fact Check and Activist Falsehoods,” KochFacts.com, Oct. 12, 2011.
“All along our street”: David Bouie was interviewed in Robert Greenwald’s film, Koch Brothers Exposed, produced by Brave New Films.
Two years earlier: See “The Smokestack Effect,” USA Today, Dec. 10, 2008.
Of this total output: See EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory databank. By 2013 Koch Industries had improved its standing so that it ranked as the country’s tenth-largest toxic polluter, out of eight thousand companies required by law to register with the EPA.
“The investment banks”: Continetti, “Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics.”
Another defender: The University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis told the Washington Post, “I’m sure he would vigorously dispute this, but it’s hard not to characterize him as the congressman from Koch.” See Dan Eggen, “GOP Freshman Pompeo Turned to Koch for Money for Business, Then Politics,” Washington Post, March 20, 2011.
Within weeks, Pompeo: The Washington Post first wrote about Pompeo’s championing of the Kochs’ legislative priorities. Ibid.
Koch Industries’ lobbying disclosures: See the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Explorer data, http://data.influenceexplorer.com/lobbying/?r#aXNzdWU9RU5WJnJlZ2lzdHJhbnRfZnQ9a29jaCUyMGluZHVzdHJpZXM=.
“naked belly crawl”: Robert Draper, When the Tea Party Came to Town (Simon & Schuster, 2012), 180.
“It hurts to be tossed out”: Robert Inglis, interview with author.
“an unconstitutional power grab”: Fred Upton and Tim Phillips, “How Congress Can Stop the EPA’s Power Grab,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 28, 2010.