Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein

Political Ideology

Trad Conservatism

• ProPublica reported that the Uihleins are major funders of Restoration America, which, according to documents ProPublica obtained, wants to “get on God’s side of the issues and stay there” and “punish leftists.”
• Spent hundreds of millions of dollars on far-right causes over the last decade that would roll back society to a pre-Civil Rights Movement, pre-New Deal era. According to an in-depth investigation by ProPublica into the Uihlein’s political giving, this includes fighting against “taxes, unions, abortions, marijuana legalization, and LGBTQ freedom,” while supporting election denial, school privatization, and the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education.

Controversies

• According to investigative reporting by ProPublica, the Uihleins “exert near total control” at their company. ProPublica writes, “The Uline employee handbook includes rules such as: “women are not permitted to wear pants except as part of a pantsuit or on Fridays; hose or stockings must be worn except during warmer months; dresses ‘that are too short’ and corduroy of any kind are strictly prohibited.” The handbook also defines ‘tardy’ as one minute past an employee’s scheduled start time. Just four personal items are allowed on employees’ desks, with maximum dimensions of 5 inches by 7 inches. One former staffer at Uline’s headquarters recalled a coworker who was forced to remove several drawings done by his young child. ‘Liz would walk up and down the aisles, and if your desk looked off, you’d be written up,’ he recalled.”
• Dick has followed in the footsteps of his father, Edgar Uihlein Jr., who was also a funder of far-right politics who supported politicians who embraced segregation. Notable acts include sponsoring a speech by former U.S. Army general Edwin Walker, who “toured the country attacking supposed communist conspiracies and civil rights, while celebrating the Southern defeat of Reconstruction, which he labeled ‘the tyranny within our own white race,’” according to ProPublica and contributing $1,000 to segregationist George Wallace’s presidential campaign in 1968. He was also on the National Finance Committee of the John Birch Society, a group to the right of the Republican Party, which ProPublica reported was “known for its obsessively anti-communist politics. The Birchers combined hostility to New Deal social programs with lurid conspiracies, famously campaigning against ‘the horrors of fluoridation,’ a supposed Red plot.”
• Thanks to a provision in the 2017 Trump tax bill that they advocated for, the Uihleins may have saved more than half a billion in taxes over eight-years.
• During the pandemic, Liz Uihlein campaigned against lockdowns and required workers to return to the office before vaccines were available. According to ProPublica, Uihlein “emailed Wisconsin’s Democratic governor in July 2021 urging him to ‘get government out of the way’ by immediately cutting people off of expanded federal unemployment benefits that had helped people weather the pandemic. Uline needed to fill 500 jobs, she noted in the email, which ProPublica obtained via a public records request. The governor did not oblige.”
• Dick Uihlein backed Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama after Moore was accused of sexual misconduct with underage girls.
• The Uihleins funding of a network of politicians and groups promoting election denial. According to ProPublica’s investigation:
  • They were among the biggest donors to Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who attended the January 6th rally and had ties to a prominent antisemite, which Mastriano has minimized in response to public pressure, saying “Andrew Torba doesn’t speak for me or my campaign.”
  • They donated to Jim Marchant, the Nevada Secretary of State nominee who opposed the certification of Biden’s election win in 2020.
  • They are major funders to groups spreading election misinformation, like Restoration America
• Dick Uihlein has funded publications that look like newspapers, but are actually rightwing political content. The publications have names that resemble newspapers, like North Cook News and East Central Reporter, but are in reality devoted to criticizing the Uihlein’s political opponents.
• Through a regular column in the Uline Catalog, Liz Uihlein publicizes her right wing views, writing about topics including her devotion to Fox News, her love for Hall & Oates–who once performed at Uline–and her disdain for marijuana. “Have the politicians gone mad?” she once wrote about the legalization of the drug. “It’s bad news.”

Obscene spending:

• The Uihleins own several homes–one in Wisconsin, one in California, one in Illinois, and several waterfront properties in Florida.
• They own a Dassault Falcon 2000EX private jet. Models of the Dassault Falcon are estimated to cost anywhere from $6 to $12 million.
  • In September 2020, at the height of COVID, Liz used their private jet for a 36-hour business trip to Canada and was granted special exemption from Canada’s COVID quarantine restrictions.
• They own an increasing portion of Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin.
  • Through their holding company EAU Holdings, the Uihleins have bought up numerous businesses in the tiny town (population: 800), where they own a vacation home, and attempted to re-shape it according to their taste. They now own a restaurant, fitness center, salon, coffee shop, hotel, spa, and two boutiques in town. A 2018 New York Times article described how Liz Uihlein “is known for buying up businesses, spending millions on public improvements and dispensing unsolicited advice” including which shrubs a local business should plant. In 2014 she bought up a local inn in the town when it was rumored that a Pakistani buyer was about to purchase it. According to the New York Times, in an email, she wrote, “Do you think I wanted to own a motel like this? Huh?” she wrote, in an email that circulated around town. “I bought the motel as a defensive move for Manitowish Waters because the owner … was going to sell to what several of us, including the Mayor, thought was not in the best interests of the town” and “You all should be happy there are folks like my husband and myself who can afford to buy old, dilapidated buildings, rehab them and put businesses in them without worrying about a profit.”

Enabling

Privatizing education and putting hate in schools

The Uihleins are backers of rightwing education privatization efforts. Alongside other pro-education privatization billionaires Jeff Yass and Bernard Marcus, Dick Uihlein donated $2 million to the School Freedom Fund PAC during the 2023-2024 election cycle. The School Freedom Fund PAC is affiliated with the Club for Growth, which supports voucher programs, charter school expansion, and the shuttering of the U.S. Department of Education. The PAC has worked to remove state lawmakers or opposed candidates who are against private school vouchers in states including Texas, Tennessee,Alabama, and Kentucky.

Uihlein has also given at least $336,000 to the SuperPAC of Moms for Liberty, an organization designated as an extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that advocates book bans, spreads hateful conspiracy theories and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and calls for the end of the Department of Education. Moms for Liberty members have been linked to harassment of and threats to school boards and other parents. For example, MediaMatters reported that after Moms for Liberty opposed a county’s LGBTQ guidelines, parents called school board members “pedophiles” for a policy allowing students the right to dress and use bathrooms that aligned with their gender identity and left messages saying, “We’re coming at you like a freight train! We are going to make you beg for mercy. If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!”

Election Denial

The Uihleins funded a network of politicians and groups promoting election denial. They were among the biggest donors to Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who attended the January 6th rally and had ties to a prominent antisemite, which Mastriano has since distanced himself from. They also donated to Jim Marchant, the Nevada Secretary of State nominee who opposed the certification of Biden’s election win in 2020. They are major funders to groups spreading election misinformation, such as Restoration America.

Homophobia and Transphobia

The LGBTQ community is a particular target of the Uihlein’s reactionary agenda. Dick Uihlein backed an Illinois school board candidate who fought a policy allowing transgender students in girls’ locker rooms. The Uihleins also backed Jeanne Ives, a conservative primary challenger to Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner who, according to the New York Times, ran an ad featuring “a cartoonish depiction of a transgender woman, highlighting Mr. Rauner’s support for a bill permitting people to change the gender on their birth certificates. The ad was so virulently transphobic that, according to the New York Times, a former Chairman of the Illinois Republicans said, “It was probably the most offensive thing I’ve seen in a state race.” According to ProPublica, “Dick is a major funder of the American Principles Project, which runs ads attacking what it calls ‘transgender ideology,’ abortion and the teaching of ‘critical race theory.’”