Krystal Ball

Early life and education

Ball was born on November 24, 1981, in King George County, Virginia, 60 miles south of Washington, D.C. Her father, Edward Ball, is a physicist, and mother, Rose Marie Ball, a teacher. The name Krystal came from her father, who wrote his dissertation on crystals. She has two older sisters.

Ball graduated from King George High School in King George, Virginia and then attended Clemson University for one year before transferring to the University of Virginia, where she received a bachelor's degree in economics.

Career

Ball is a business owner and a certified public accountant. She previously worked for the federal contractor CGI Group. Leaving CGI, she went on to design educational software in a business owned with her husband, working internationally. She is a former columnist for The Atlantic.

2010 U.S. House campaign

In 2010, Ball ran to represent Virginia's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives against Republican incumbent Rob Wittman. During the campaign, Ball supported education reform, including charter schools, using technology, alternative certification of teachers, and paying teachers six-figure salaries. She also called for a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress, banning lobbyist gifts, increasing disclosure, and establishing a new Independent Ethics Commission to investigate and audit influence by special interests. 72% of her fundraising came from out-of-state donors. In total, she raised $1.06 million, 20% less than Wittman.

One month before the election, bloggers posted sexually suggestive photos of Ball with her then-husband from a Christmas party in 2004. Her campaign had little national attention before the incident. Ball initially blamed her opponent, Wittman, for the leak as being part of a smear campaign. Wittman released a statement opposing the leak and asked the bloggers to take it down. Ball also complained about the double standard of expectations for male and female candidates given the scant attention Scott Brown had received for previously posing nude in Cosmopolitan. She has used the experience as a warning for future candidates about their youthful indiscretions.

Ball lost to Wittman by a margin of 63.90% to 34.76%.

2012–2017: ''The Cycle'' and PAC

In part due to the photo scandal from the 2010 campaign, Ball appeared on Fox News, CNN, and CNBC, and became a regular contributor for MSNBC. She was a regular contributor to the HuffPost. From June 25, 2012, to July 31, 2015, Ball co-hosted the MSNBC show, The Cycle, with Touré, Steve Kornacki, and S. E. Cupp. Interviewed by Jill Filipovic, she explained how she launched a new career as a political commentator on television. One of her most discussed monologues on the show was a 2014 critique of Hillary Clinton which urged her not to run for President.

In 2012, Ball launched a website calling for a boycott of advertisers on The Rush Limbaugh Show after Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke. ThinkProgress reported on March 2, 2012, that over 50 advertisers were confirmed to have dropped the show. She was a Senior Fellow of the New Leaders Council. Ball's first book, Reversing the Apocalypse: Hijacking the Democratic Party to Save the World, was published in 2017, in which she argued that the Democratic Party needed to return to its New Deal roots by emulating Franklin D. Roosevelt and advocating a more economically interventionist agenda than it has done in recent decades.

In May 2017, Ball created the People's House Project, a political action committee (PAC) working on behalf of Democratic causes. It was among the largest contributors to Richard Ojeda's campaign for the West Virginia Senate.

In May 2018, McClatchy wrote of her PAC:But thus far, nobody has benefited more financially from the group than Ball herself. Of the $445,000 Ball raised for the group, she paid herself more than a third of that—$174,000—in salary, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. The majority of her salary—$104,000—came in the first three months of this year alone. That's nearly eight times more than the nearly $22,000 the PHP has used to support its dozen endorsed candidates, some of whom have received just a single $1,000 contribution. Political groups with a glaring discrepancy between personal salaries and candidate contributions are often deemed so-called "Scam PACs," a type of organization that enriches its founders while doing little to assist the cause or candidate they purportedly support.

Ball responded to McClatchy's claims, stating that, because the PAC receives money in fits and starts, she paid herself a lump sum in the first months of 2018 as backpay for what she should have earned in 2017, and that her pay "was comparable to what other PAC directors typically make". She also stated that her PAC does not operate in the same way as a typical PAC in that it is not a "direct conduit" of funds, and that she herself is effectively a manager for each of the candidates she works with. McClatchy wrote that candidates and campaign officials that she had assisted had said that Ball "was a go-to adviser for all manner of problems and questions. Her help was especially valuable, they added, because most of them couldn't afford the kind of high-priced consultants who usually guide campaigns, especially for first-time candidates... There's no doubt that Ball actually helps the candidates they endorse. They've just backed a very different kind of candidates, and unlike most groups, they've prioritized political advice over direct financial assistance."

2018–2021: ''Rising''

In 2018, Ball started hosting a webcast called Rising on The Hill. She originally co-hosted the webcast with Buck Sexton, but Sexton was later replaced by Saagar Enjeti. Ball's second book, co-authored with Enjeti, is The Populist's Guide to 2020: A New Right and New Left Are Rising, released on February 8, 2020.

Ball supported Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign. During the 2020 impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, she speculated that Democrats were using the Senate trial to keep Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in Washington, D.C. when they would otherwise be campaigning.

In May 2021, Ball announced she was leaving Rising in order to produce her own independent show with Enjeti titled Breaking Points.

2021–present: ''Breaking Points''

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti left The Hill in June 2021 and established an independent program published as both a podcast and a video news show on YouTube. The show, titled Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, achieved around three hundred thousand subscribers the first week. In late June 2023, Breaking Points exceeded 1,000,000 subscribers on YouTube.

On January 1, 2021, Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski launched a new podcast called Krystal Kyle & Friends.

Personal life

Ball was first married to Aaron Peterson in 2006. In 2008, she married Jonathan Dariyanani, an entrepreneur in educational software. Ball attributes her further interest in politics to her experience after becoming a new mother during the 2008 primaries and also watching the outcome of the 2008 U.S. presidential election while working in Jordan with Dariyanani. She saw how it affected people in that country, and thereby gained an appreciation for the global impact of U.S. politics.

Ball became engaged to fellow YouTube political commentator and co-host Kyle Kulinski in September 2022. The two were married in May 2023.

Bibliography

• Reversing the Apocalypse: Hijacking the Democratic Party to Save the World (Pelican Media, 2017, eBook)
• The Populist's Guide to 2020: A New Right and New Left Are Rising (with Saagar Enjeti; Strong Arm Press, 2020, )

Electoral history

References

References

1. (April 2010). "Girl crush: Krystal Ball". Hearst.
2. (May 14, 2010). "Krystal Ball hopes for good fortune come November". Rappahannock Media LLC.
3. (September 19, 2019). "Krystal Ball on Why Centrism Sucks {{!}} Useful Idiots". [[Rolling Stone]].
4. (2012). "Krystal Ball". [[The Atlantic]].
5. (2010). "Virginia District 01 2010 race". OpenSecrets.
6. (November 5, 2010). "The Facebook Skeletons Come Out". The New York Times.
7. (October 7, 2010). "44 – Krystal Ball: Bloggers who posted my photos are 'sexist and wrong'". Washington Post.
8. (October 7, 2010). "Bloggers post revealing photos of Democrat Krystal Ball". dailypress.com.
9. Filipovic, Jill. (January 26, 2015). "Get That Life: How I Started My Own MSNBC Show". [[Cosmopolitan (magazine).
10. Ball, Krystal. (February 11, 2014). "Don't run, Hillary. Don't run". [[MSNBC]].
11. Peck, Adam. (March 2, 2012). "Rush Limbaugh's Advertisers Facing Social Media Firestorm". ThinkProgress.
12. Angueira, Lauren. (November 30, 2016). "South Florida activists prepare for life under Trump". Miami New Times.
13. Stuck, Taylor. (October 29, 2018). "Ojeda outraises Miller with out-of-state donations". Associated Press.
14. (Apr 4, 2021). "Inside Radio Extra Close-Up: Buck Sexton.". Insideradio.com.
15. (15 June 2022). "The Rise of the Internet's Creative Middle Class". Condé Nast.
16. (4 July 2021). "Joe Rogan Is Too Big To Cancel". The New York Times.
17. (January 7, 2020). "Popping the Bolton bubble". [[Politico#Politico Playbook.
18. Hartmann, Thom. (February 3, 2020). "Will 2020 Election Be A Story of Populism?". [[Free Speech TV]].
19. (March 6, 2020). "Krystal Ball: Why MSNBC is to blame for Joe Biden". The Hill.
20. (December 10, 2019). "Krystal Ball: Is this how Bernie Sanders will break the establishment?". The Hill.
21. "Krystal Ball Is the Anti–Rachel Maddow Bernie Fans Have Been Waiting For". Jacobin Magazine.
22. (March 11, 2020). "Krystal Ball: The left doesn't owe Joe Biden their vote". The Hill.
23. Chait, Jonathan. (December 23, 2019). "Tulsi Gabbard and the Return of the Anti-Anti-Trump Left".
24. Ball, Krystal. (May 28, 2021). "Alright here's part 1 of the big news! @esaagar and I are leaving The Hill and going independent! Sign up here to be the first to know what's next. https://t.co/AeqZRi6PXb".
25. (June 12, 2021). "Why 'Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar' became the No. 1 political podcast in a week".
26. (June 27, 2023). "Krystal And Saagar CELEBRATE 1 Million Subscribers {{!}} Breaking Points".
27. Ball, Krystal. (2021). "Krystal Kyle & Friends".
28. "Peterson-Ball". [[The Free Lance–Star]].
29. (March 24, 2020). "Here's how you can help the coronavirus response". The Hill.
30. "Krystal Ball on Instagram".
31. Secular Talk. "We're engaged y'all! I'm one lucky dude".
32. (10 May 2023). "We Got Married!". Krystal Kyle & Friends.
33. Craig, Berry. (April 6, 2017). "Krystal Ball book: Dems must rekindle the spirit of FDR to reverse the 'apocalypse' of Trumpism".
34. "Player Bio: Krystal Ball – Clemson University Official Athletic Site".
35. Cook, Phyllis. (May 27, 2009). "Krystal Ball is running for Congress". The Journal.
36. (October 10, 2010). "Candidate Biography and Q&A: Krystal M. Ball".
37. Chelyen Davis. (June 28, 2009). "Krystal Ball gets started early in bid for Rob Wittman's seat". [[The Free Lance–Star]].
38. Palmeri, Christopher. (March 6, 2012). "Limbaugh Radio Show Faces Backlash from Social Media as Advertisers Flee".
39. Yakas, Ben. (March 4, 2012). "Politicians, Advertisers Unimpressed With Rush Limbaugh's Apology".
40. Siegel, Robert. (March 8, 2012). "As Advertisers Flee, Is Limbaugh Losing That Much?". [[NPR]].
41. (November 2, 2010). "General and Special Elections Unofficial Results".
42. Stabley, Matthew. (May 14, 2009). "Krystal Ball -- the Future of The Hill's Most Beautiful".
43. "Issues". Krystal Ball for Congress.
44. (April 25, 2011). "Congressional Elections: Virginia District 01 Race: 2010 Cycle".
45. "Is Krystal Ball's PAC a fresh approach or a get-rich scheme?".
46. (May 20, 2018). ""Ask The Candidates" — Krystal Ball Fires Back At Reporter, Defends People's House Project".
47. Pershing, Ben. (September 9, 2011). "Krystal Ball: From scandal star to professional pundit". [[The Washington Post]].
48. (March 7, 2012). "Super Tuesday Gives No Definite Result".
49. "Krystal Ball".
50. Stelter, Brian. "New MSNBC Show Will Feature a Panel of Political Pundits". [[The New York Times]].
51. "Rising with The Hill's Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton".
52. (November 25, 2019). "Krystal Ball: Yang's MSNBC boycott shows network has 'officially lost the left'".