Back in November, I started digging into a group pushing for a constitutional convention. It may sound crazy, especially in this political climate, but according to the Constitution, it’s doable. Under Article V is a dusty old clause that says in order to amend the Constitution without going through Congress (the usual route), two-thirds of the states must pass a resolution calling for a convention to propose changes. The thing is, the last time we held a constitutional convention, the framers scrapped our previous governing document (the Articles of Confederation) and rewrote it to the one that endures to this day. That is the threat of Convention of States, a small but extremely well-funded group of conservative activists. Supported by the same actors behind the right-wing takeover of the courts, COS seeks to call another convention in order to, in their words, “reverse 115 years of progressivism.”
COS is not a household name, and yet the group has quietly reached 19 of the necessary 34 states to force such a convention. At the helm of COS is Mark Meckler, a former Herbalife salesman and Tea Party leader turned lobbyist. For the last ten years, Meckler has been peddling this idea to statehouses across the country. With a persona antithetical to his peers on Fox News—warm, calm, even ordinary—Meckler projects himself as the crusader of what he calls the “largest self-governing, grassroots army in American history.” Except, as I learned reporting this months-long investigation for New York Magazine, there is nothing grassroots about it. Oh and plot twist: fellow conservatives are furious.
I won’t spoil the story for you. But as Lee Schoenbeck, a Republican state senator who has been targeted by COS, put it: “In my area of South Dakota, COS would be synonymous with dog shit,” he said. “They’re well-meaning folks; they’re patriotic,” he said about COS’s supporters. “But this fraud is taking advantage of them to line his family’s pockets … He’s just another scam artist.”
Here’s my latest for New York Magazine, a profile of Mark Meckler, The Constitutional Kamikaze.