Krystal Marie Ball (born November 24, 1981) is an American political commentator and political podcast host currently co-hosting the American political news and opinion series Breaking Points alongside Saagar Enjeti. She was previously a political candidate, as well as co-host on the MSNBC show The Cycle, a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, and a co-host of The Hill's Rising along with Enjeti. In May 2021, Ball and Enjeti announced that they were leaving the show in order to launch their own independent project titled Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar. Ball is a co-host with her husband Kyle Kulinski on the podcast Krystal Kyle & Friends. Ball was the Democratic Party nominee for Congress in Virginia's 1st congressional district in the 2010 election, losing to Republican incumbent Rob Wittman. In May 2017, she created the People's House Project, a political action committee working on behalf of Democratic causes.
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 Inc.. 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.
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