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."
